(FILE)

Yang Jingnian, a 104-year-old renowned economist, educator and translator, has become something of a legend.

Yang was born in 1908 to a poor family in Hunan Province. He went to Britain to study with government funds in 1945 and obtained a doctoral degree from Oxford University. After graduation, Yang came back to China and has been a teacher at Nankai University in Tianjin Municipality since 1948.

Yang is one of the founders of development economics in China and published several books on development economics. Yang also translated many foreign works on economics. In 1998, the then 90- year-old translated Adam Smith's masterpiece The Wealth of Nations within 11 months. In 2007, Yang wrote an autobiography as he was turning 100 years old.