Professor Lian was born and raised in Hong Kong. He obtained his B.A. (magna cum laude) in mathematics from Carleton College, Minnesota and his PhD in economics from the University of Minnesota where he wrote his dissertation under Edward E. Prescott, 2004 economics Nobel Laureate. He taught at Tulane University, the University of California-Riverside and the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.

From 1998 he served as senior policy advisor and speech writer for the first post-1997 Chief Executive of Hong Kong SAR at the Central Policy Unit of the government. Until 2004, when he was dismissed for sympathizing with the pro-democracy movement in the city. He also served as chief editor and lead writer of the Hong Kong Economic Journal, the city’s then premier business newspaper, for four years, and had been on the International Council of the Asia Society. Since 2010, he has been living in Japan, where he taught first at the Akita International University and then at the International Liberal Arts College at Yamanashi Gakuin University.

In 2013, he was visiting professor at the Far Eastern Federal University in Vladivostok, Russia. Professor Lian has published extensively in academic and professional publications, and had written for the Washington, D.C. think tank, Center for Strategic and International Studies, on Hong Kong and China-related issues in the run-up to 1997. He was a Contributing Opinion Writer for the New York Times from 2014 to 2021.