Chen Han-seng
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Chen Han-seng (Simplified Chinese: 陈翰笙; Pinyin: Chén Hànshēng) (February 5, 1897–March 13, 2004) was a Chinese sociologist.
He was born in Wuxi, Jiangsu. He studied at Pomona College, California, and then Chicago University He took a doctorate at Berlin University. In 1924 he had an academic position at Beijing University.
He was recruited to the Comintern, also in 1924, by Li Dazhao, as mentioned in his 1988 autobiography My Life During Four Eras. During the 1930s he came down on the Communist side of Mao Zedong, drawing on his field research on the economic conditions of Chinese peasantry for the Institute for Social Science Research. He wrote Landlord and Peasant in China (1936) on this area. He was one of Mao's theorists, and spent time out of China in Moscow. He was one of spy Richard Sorge's contacts.
From 1945 to 1950 he was in the USA. He then returned to China, an uncomfortable experience since he was accused of spying for the Kuomintang. Later in the Cultural Revolution he was harshly treated.
