Born in December 1935 in Hunan Province, he graduated from National Taiwan University in 1957 and received his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley in 1967. He previously taught in the United States. Since 1980, he has served at the Second Institute of Oceanography as Associate Professor, Professor, Director, and later Honorary Director. He also served as Deputy Director of the Earth Sciences Division of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and as Chair of the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) of UNESCO. He was elected Academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1991, Fellow of The World Academy of Sciences (TWAS) in 1994, and Foreign Member of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences in 1999.
He has long been dedicated to research on physical oceanography and circulation dynamics, with a particular focus on the circulation in China’s marginal seas and its interaction with the Kuroshio. As the Chinese Chief Scientist, he led the large-scale China–Japan Kuroshio collaborative research program (1986–1992). In the 1990s, he also conducted multiple basin-scale, synchronized joint investigations of the South China Sea with oceanographers from Taiwan. Since 1991, he has worked with fisheries oceanographers to promote the development of marine ecosystem dynamics in China and jointly led the National Natural Science Foundation major project “Bohai Sea Ecosystem Dynamics” (1997–2000). He has chaired expert groups for several National 973 Program projects and has received numerous provincial and ministerial science and technology awards. He has published more than 100 scientific papers.