WASHINGTON, Jan 17 (Reuters) - A leading Chinese economist, Justin Yifu Lin, is a front runner for the World Bank's top economist job, Bank sources said on Thursday.

Lin, 56, is a director and founder of the China Center for Economic Research think tank and an economics professor at Peking University in Beijing and at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.

He received a masters degree in Marxist political economy from Peking University in 1982 and has a PhD from the University of Chicago in 1986.

He has also twice won China's top economics award, the Sun Yefang Economics Prize.

He is originally from Taiwan and some accounts of his life say that he swam from the island of Kinmen, off shore of mainland China's Fujian Province in a rare defection to China in 1979.

World Bank sources said Lin was the top contender for position, replacing Frenchman Francois Bourguignon, but his appointment had not yet been confirmed nor approved by the board.

The sources said his appointment would bode well for the World Bank's push to be more useful to fast-growing emerging economies like China.

World Bank President Robert Zoellick has also sought to work closer with Beijing in Africa where China is increasingly tapping the continent for oil and minerals and lending eagerly across the region.

China's increasing ties with Africa have prompted concerns by traditional donor countries that it is imposing unmanageable new debt burdens on some African countries.

In a coup for Zoellick last month, Beijing agreed for the first time to become a donor to the World Bank's fund for poor countries. (Reporting by Lesley Wroughton; editing by Richard Chang)

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