Chen Hansheng

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Chen Hansheng (February 5, 1897 – March 13, 2004), also known as Chen Han-seng and Geoffrey Chen, was a Chinese historian, sociologist and social activist considered a pioneer of modern Chinese social science.

Chen became a member in 1932 and 1933 of the Richard Sorge spy ring, initially based in Shanghai, which gathered intelligence on Chiang Kaishek's troop movements and Japanese war plans. Chen fled Shanghai for Tokyo in 1934-35, where he produced major works of scholarship and befriended Guo Moruo. In the spring of 1935, the unexpected arrest in Shanghai of a messenger from Moscow almost exposed Chen's real identity. Chen sensed the danger and fled to Moscow.^[2]

After Chen fled from Tokyo to Moscow in 1935, he was recruited by William Holland and Edward Carter to join the secretariat in New York of the Institute of Pacific Relations. Chen worked for IPR in new york lecturing and editing publications from 1936 until 1939, until asked by clandestinely by Zhou Enlai to go to Hong Kong. Chen stated in his memoirs that Lattimore, the editor of Pacific Affairs, was kept in the dark as to his true identity as a Communist agent. ^[2]

At Hong Kong, until December, 1941 Chen was responsible for running a network of support for the Gonghe internatioal industrial cooperatives supporting enterprises connected to Chongqing and Yan'an, ' (delete as irrelevant discussion of Wang Jingwei)

In 1941 Chen moved to

Career in the People's Republic

Chen returned to China in 1950(delete),1951. He represented the new government internationally in Eastern Europe and Asia. He had an important role in establishing warm relations between India and China before 1958, as well as serving as vice Director of the Institute of International Relations attached to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Later he was the founder and first Director of the Institute of World History of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (later part of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences). Persecuted during the Cultural Revolution, he was put under house arrest for two years and often tortured; his wife was tortured to death in late 1968.^[2]

Chen was later reinstated, and served as Consultant of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Honorary Director of the Institute of International Relations, professor of politics at Peking University, and editor-in-chief of the "World History Series" published by the

A centenarian, he died in Beijing in 2004, at the age of 107.

Selected English language publications

Books

• Landlord and Peasant in China; a Study of the Agrarian Crisis in South China. Preface by
  Frederick V. Field
• The Present Agrarian Problem in China (Shanghai: China Institute of Pacific Relations).
• Notes on Migration of Nan Min to the Northeast (Shanghai: Published under the auspices of the China Council of the Institute of Pacific Relations, 1931).
• Prospects of Continued Resistance in China ([New York], 1938).
• with Wong Yin-seng, Industrial Capital and Chinese Peasants a Study of the Livelihood of Chinese Tobacco Cultivators, (1939)
• Gung Ho! The Story of the Chinese Cooperatives, (1947) At Hathi Trust HERE
• Frontier Land Systems in Southernmost China: A Comparative Study of Agrarian Problems and Social Organization among the Pai Yi People of Yunnan and the Kamba People of Sikang (New York: International Secretariat, Institute of Pacific Relations, 1949).

Selected works in Chinese

• 四个时代 的 我 (Sige shidai de wo; My Life During Four Eras) (Beijing:Zhongguo wenshi chupan she [China Culture and History Press], 1988).

Further reading

• Song, Yuwu (2013). Biographical Dictionary of the People's Republic of China. Jefferson, North Carolina:
  ISBN 978-1-4766-0298-1
  .
• Gittings, John (April 1, 2004). "Obituary: Chen Han-seng". The Guardian.
• "Legendary Life of Chen Hansheng". China Daily. June 30, 2003.
• MacKinnon, Stephen R. (2022). Chen Hansheng: China's Last Romantic Revolutionary. Hong Kong; New York: Chinese University of Hong Kong Press; distributed by Columbia University Press.
  ISBN 9789882372603
  .