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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. He was an underground
spy Espionage, spying, or intelligence gathering is the act of obtaining secret or confidential information (intelligence) from non-disclosed sources or divulging of the same without the permission of the holder of the information for a tangib ...
for the
Communist International The Communist International (Comintern), also known as the Third International, was a Soviet-controlled international organization founded in 1919 that advocated world communism. The Comintern resolved at its Second Congress to "struggle by ...
, and active as a member of
Richard Sorge Richard Sorge (russian: Рихард Густавович Зорге, Rikhard Gustavovich Zorge; 4 October 1895 – 7 November 1944) was a German-Azerbaijani journalist and Soviet military intelligence officer who was active before and during Wo ...
's Tokyo ring that gathered intelligence for the Soviet Union on Japanese war plans. His prolific scholarship used innovative Marxist analysis that influenced both Chinese and international understandings of China's village economy and industrial structure. His biographer called him "China's last romantic revolutionary."


Early life and education

Chen was born in
Wuxi Wuxi (, ) is a city in southern Jiangsu province, eastern China, by car to the northwest of downtown Shanghai, between Changzhou and Suzhou. In 2017 it had a population of 3,542,319, with 6,553,000 living in the entire prefecture-level city ar ...
,
Jiangsu Jiangsu (; ; pinyin: Jiāngsū, alternatively romanized as Kiangsu or Chiangsu) is an eastern coastal province of the People's Republic of China. It is one of the leading provinces in finance, education, technology, and tourism, with its ca ...
. He graduated from
Pomona College Pomona College ( ) is a private liberal arts college in Claremont, California. It was established in 1887 by a group of Congregationalists who wanted to recreate a "college of the New England type" in Southern California. In 1925, it became t ...
, earning
Phi Beta Kappa The Phi Beta Kappa Society () is the oldest academic honor society in the United States, and the most prestigious, due in part to its long history and academic selectivity. Phi Beta Kappa aims to promote and advocate excellence in the liberal ...
with a BA in History in 1920. He then pursued an MA in History at
The University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the be ...
. In spring 1922, he enrolled at
Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of high ...
where he obtained a PhD in history. During his time there, he assisted
Charles Homer Haskins Charles Homer Haskins (December 21, 1870 – May 14, 1937) was a history professor at Harvard University. He was an American historian of the Middle Ages, and advisor to U.S. President Woodrow Wilson. He is widely recognized as the first academic ...
, a specialist in Medieval Europe. A year later, he left the United States for Germany, and completed his doctorate in history at
Berlin University Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (german: Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, abbreviated HU Berlin) is a German public research university in the central borough of Mitte in Berlin. It was established by Frederick William III on the initiative o ...
. In 1924, he returned to China and became one of the youngest professors at Peking University. Later he joined the Academia Sinica, working at the Institute of Social Science Research.


Career as a scholar and underground Communist

Chen was recruited to the Comintern in 1924, by
Li Dazhao Li Dazhao or Li Ta-chao (October 29, 1889 – April 28, 1927) was a Chinese intellectual and revolutionary who participated in the New Cultural Movement in the early years of the Republic of China, established in 1912. He co-founded the Chinese C ...
, one of the founding members of the
Chinese Communist Party The Chinese Communist Party (CCP), officially the Communist Party of China (CPC), is the founding and sole ruling party of the People's Republic of China (PRC). Under the leadership of Mao Zedong, the CCP emerged victorious in the Chinese Civil ...
. He kept this membership a secret until after the success of the Communist revolution in China.Chen ''My Life During Four Eras'' (1988) During the 1930s he conducted field research on the economic conditions in South China for the Institute for Social Science Research. In the resulting ''Landlord and Peasant in China'' (1936) Chen concluded that landlords exploited poor and middle peasants and that only radical political change could improve conditions. His book fortified Mao Zedong's analysis that the peasantry was exploited by the twin forces of landlord usury and foreign economic imperialism. Chen became a member of the
Richard Sorge Richard Sorge (russian: Рихард Густавович Зорге, Rikhard Gustavovich Zorge; 4 October 1895 – 7 November 1944) was a German-Azerbaijani journalist and Soviet military intelligence officer who was active before and during Wo ...
spy ring, initially based in Shanghai, which gathered intelligence on Japanese war plans. When Sorge was reassigned to Tokyo, Chen went along and worked closely with Ozaki Hozumi and others of the ring until 1935, when the unexpected arrest of a messenger from Moscow almost exposed Chen's real identity. Chen sensed the danger and fled to Moscow. After Chen fled from Tokyo to Moscow in 1935,
Owen Lattimore Owen Lattimore (July 29, 1900 – May 31, 1989) was an American Orientalist and writer. He was an influential scholar of China and Central Asia, especially Mongolia. Although he never earned a college degree, in the 1930s he was editor of ''Pacif ...
, then the editor of the journal "Pacific Affairs", of the
Institute of Pacific Relations The Institute of Pacific Relations (IPR) was an international NGO established in 1925 to provide a forum for discussion of problems and relations between nations of the Pacific Rim. The International Secretariat, the center of most IPR activity o ...
(IPR), asked the Soviet Union, a member nation of IPR, for an assistant. Moscow recommended Chen Hansheng to Lattimore, who accepted. Chen then went to New York, and worked with Lattimore from 1936 until 1939, when he was reassigned by Communist intelligence chief
Kang Sheng Kang Sheng (; 4 November 1898 – 16 December 1975) was a Chinese Communist politician best known for having overseen the CCP's internal security and intelligence apparatus during the early 1940s and again at the height of the Cultural Revolu ...
to
Hong Kong Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China (abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China on the eastern Pearl River Delta i ...
. Chen stated in his memoirs that Lattimore was kept in the dark as to his true identity as a Communist agent, and that Lattimore's scholarly and publishing activities were only to be used as a cover for Chen. At Hong Kong, Chen was responsible for running a network of
dummy corporation A dummy corporation, dummy company, or false company is an entity created to serve as a front or cover for one or more companies. It can have the appearance of being real (logo, website, and sometimes employing actual staff), but lacks the capacit ...
s funnelling huge amounts of money to the war effort of the Communist Party, mostly for the purpose of purchasing Japanese-made weapons from the Chinese collaborationist
Wang Jingwei regime The Wang Jingwei regime or the Wang Ching-wei regime is the common name of the Reorganized National Government of the Republic of China ( zh , t = 中華民國國民政府 , p = Zhōnghuá Mínguó Guómín Zhèngfǔ ), the government of the pu ...
, whose military forces were rife with corruption and thoroughly demoralized. In 1943 Chen moved to
Guilin Guilin (Standard Zhuang: ''Gveilinz''; alternatively romanized as Kweilin) is a prefecture-level city in the northeast of China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. It is situated on the west bank of the Li River and borders Hunan to the nort ...
. Wanted by the
Kuomintang The Kuomintang (KMT), also referred to as the Guomindang (GMD), the Nationalist Party of China (NPC) or the Chinese Nationalist Party (CNP), is a major political party in the Republic of China, initially on the Chinese mainland and in Tai ...
authorities, he was rescued by the British and airlifted to India where he was recruited by British intelligence in New Delhi, after convincing the British that he had become disillusioned with communism. Between 1946 and 1950, Chen lived in the United States, working as a visiting scholar at the
Johns Hopkins University Johns Hopkins University (Johns Hopkins, Hopkins, or JHU) is a private research university in Baltimore, Maryland. Founded in 1876, Johns Hopkins is the oldest research university in the United States and in the western hemisphere. It consi ...
in Maryland. While there, he was active as the Beijing's secret liaison with the
Communist Party of the USA The Communist Party USA, officially the Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA), is a communist party in the United States which was established in 1919 after a split in the Socialist Party of America following the Russian Revo ...
(CPUSA).


Career in the People's Republic

Chen returned to China in 1950, and served as Director of the Institute of International Relations attached to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and as the founder and first Director of the Institute of World History of the
Chinese Academy of Sciences The Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS); ), known by Academia Sinica in English until the 1980s, is the national academy of the People's Republic of China for natural sciences. It has historical origins in the Academia Sinica during the Republi ...
(later part of the
Chinese Academy of Social Sciences The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) is a Chinese research institute and think tank. The institution is the premier comprehensive national academic research organization in the People's Republic of China for the study in the fields of ...
). Persecuted during the
Cultural Revolution The Cultural Revolution, formally known as the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, was a sociopolitical movement in the People's Republic of China (PRC) launched by Mao Zedong in 1966, and lasting until his death in 1976. Its stated goa ...
, he was put under house arrest for two years and often tortured; his wife was tortured to death in late 1968. 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
Commercial Press The Commercial Press () is the first modern publishing organisation in China. History In 1897, 26-year-old Xia Ruifang and three of his friends (including the Bao brothers Bao Xian'en and Bao Xianchang) founded The Commercial Press in Shang ...
. He told
John Gittings John Gittings is a British journalist and author who is mainly known for his works on modern China and the Cold War. From 1983 to 2003, he worked at ''The Guardian'' (UK) as assistant foreign editor and chief foreign leader-writer. He has als ...
, a British China specialist, in the early 1980s, however, that he now thought that Mao and the Party leadership in the Great Leap Forward had mixed politics, government, and economic management together with "disastrous results." At that point Chen said he still believed that peasants might be allowed control of genuine agricultural cooperatives, but soon the leadership showed it was more interested in power. He told Gittings in 1987 "the Chinese people are not stupid" and that there would soon be a "big political upheaval." When that "upheaval" came in the
Tiananmen Massacre The Tiananmen Square protests, known in Chinese as the June Fourth Incident (), were student-led demonstrations held in Tiananmen Square, Beijing during 1989. In what is known as the Tiananmen Square Massacre, or in Chinese the June Fourth ...
and crackdown of 1989, only Chen's advanced age spared him. A
centenarian A centenarian is a person who has reached the age of 100 years. Because life expectancies worldwide are below 100 years, the term is invariably associated with longevity. In 2012, the United Nations estimated that there were 316,600 living centen ...
, he died in
Beijing } Beijing ( ; ; ), alternatively romanized as Peking ( ), is the capital of the People's Republic of China. It is the center of power and development of the country. Beijing is the world's most populous national capital city, with over 21 ...
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'' ( ew 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 Trus
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 hina Culture and History Press 1988).


Further reading

* * * *


References


Notes

{{DEFAULTSORT:Chen, Hansheng 1897 births 2004 deaths Chinese sociologists Pomona College alumni Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni Soviet spies Chinese centenarians Men centenarians Victims of the Cultural Revolution Scientists from Wuxi Educators from Wuxi Republic of China essayists Writers from Wuxi