Exemplary service

As Xu Kuangdi retires from official du- ties, his conscience will certainly be clear.

The president of the Chinese Academy of Engineering is known for his sustained devotion to academic research as a scientist and clean, competent governance during his presidency and his tenure as the mayor of Shanghai.

Xu majored in metallurgy, but became interested in economics after observing that there was no shortage of life's essentials in Britain, where he was studying in the early 1980s.