Ch'en, Eugene 陳友仁 Ch'en Yu-jen Eugene Ch'en (1878-20 November 1944), antiimperialist, publicist, lawyer, and government official, was a protege of Sun Yat-sen. He was particularly well known as the editor of journals and the author of political manifestoes. San Fernando on the island of Trinidad in the British West Indies was the birthplace of Eugene Ch'en. His father, Ch'en Kan-ch'uan, a native of Shunte hsien, Kwangtung province, is said to have served in the army of the Taiping rebels; most certainly he had been forced to flee to the West Indies when that revolt failed. Making his living as a barber, the elder Ch'en, known as Achan, went first to Jamaica and then to Martinique. In Martinique he married a woman of mixed blood who belonged to a family of Cantonese immigrants. The couple moved to Trinidad, where they raised a family of six children, five boys and a girl. Eugene Ch'en was the eldest child.

Then known as Eugene Bernard Achan, Eugene Ch'en attended the San Fernando borough school, then went to the Roman Catholic College of St. Mary's in Port-of-Spain. After leaving college he worked in a solicitor's office in Trinidad. He also began contributing articles to the local press. In time he qualified as a solicitor, conveyancer, and notary public in the supreme court of Trinidad and Tobago and opened his own office. Later he also qualified as a barrister and practiced law until 1911, when he left the colony. Reputedly his success had aroused the jealousy of his fellow practitioners, and he was consequently the victim of racial discrimination.

In 1911 Eugene Ch'en traveled to London, where he practiced briefly as a barrister. Toward the end of that year he met Sun Yat-sen, who had received news of the Wuchang revolt and was returning to China from the United States by way of England and France to become the acknowledged leader of the revolution. Sun Yat-sen was impressed by Ch'en's grasp of legal matters and succeeded in persuading him to go to China and employ his talents for the benefit of his motherland. Thus, early in 1912 Eugene Ch'en arrived in Peking. In September, "he was appointed legal adviser to the ministry of communications. He held the post until 1913, when the Kuomintang's so-called second revolution against Yuan Shih-k'ai was defeated and Sun and most of his followers had to flee the country.

Eugene Ch'en, however, remained in Peking, where he became editor of an English-language journal, the Peking Gazette. At first he supported Yuan Shih-k'ai's efforts to unify China. However, when Yuan advanced his monarchical plan late in 1915, Eugene Ch'en opposed it. He published in his paper an essay written by Liang Ch'i-ch'ao (q.v.) entitled "Strange, This So- Called Question of the Form of State." After Yuan's death in 1916, Ch'en continued his editorial policy of outspoken criticism of the government. On 18 May 1917 he published an article called "Selling China," which reported the secret negotiations that Tuan Ch'i-jui (q.v.), the premier, had carried on with Japan to give Japan control over China's armed forces. The next day Ch'en was arrested and was thrown into prison. Allegedly he claimed British citizenship and tried unsuccessfully to get the British legation at Peking to intervene on his behalf. Li Yuan-hung (q.v.), the president, ordered his release shortly afterward, bat the Peking Gazette remained closed.

Meanwhile, under pressure from the northern warlords, Li Yuan-hung dissolved the Parliament. Sun Yat-sen then launched the "constitution protection movement." With the support of the navy, he brought a number of the members of the Parliament to Canton, where a rump session was held. This move led to the formation of a new military government in the south with Sun as its head. Eugene Ch'en joined Sun at Canton - In the summer of 1918, together with Quo T'ai-ch'i and C. T. Wang, Ch'en went to the United States to secure American support for the southern government at Canton, but with no success.

In 1919 Ch'en was in France, serving as a technical expert on the southern group, headed by C. C. Wu (Wu Ch'ao-shu, q.v.), of the Chinese delegation to the Paris Peace Conference. He prepared several documents for the delegation; the most noteworthy was China's demand for abrogation of all treaties derived from Japan's Twenty-one Demands of 1915. Ch'en visited London and other European cities, not returning to China until the summer of 1920. He then went to Shanghai and established the Shanghai Gazette, which more or less continued the editorial policies of the Peking Gazette. In 1922, Eugene Ch'en rejoined Sun Yat-sen as his foreign affairs adviser and attended the meetings in Shanghai between Sun and Adolph Joffe, a Soviet envoy, in the winter of 1922. The Sun-Joffe declaration ofJanuary 1923 marked a pronounced political shift to the left on Ch'en's part and the appearance of the anti-imperialist nationalism that was to characterize Ch'en's political attitude for the next several years. In February 1923 Sun returned to Canton after his loyal troops had ousted Ch'en Chiungming (q.v.) from the city and adjacent areas. Sun revived the old military government and re-assumed the title of generalissimo. Eugene Ch'en soon returned to serve as Sun's foreign affairs adviser. In August 1924 the Canton Merchants Corps attempted to stage a revolt, but the government halted the supply of arms to them. The British authorities sought to intervene and threatened to use British naval forces against Sun. On 1 September 1924 Sun Yat-sen issued a declaration to the world and also sent a note to British Prime Minister Ramsay Mac- Donald lodging a strong protest against the "bloody imperialism" of the British. These documents were drafted by Eugene Ch'en. Later in October, the Merchant Corps again attempted to revolt. Sun then organized a special committee, which he headed, to deal with the situation. In addition to Eugene Ch'en, membership included Hsu Ch'ung-chih, Liao Chung-k'ai, Wang Ching-wei, Chiang Kai-shek, and T'an P'ing-shan. The Merchants Corps staged an armed uprising on 15 October, but it was suppressed quickly.

Late in October 1924 Sun Yat-sen accepted the invitation of Feng Yü-hsiang (q.v.) and Tuan Ch'i-jui to visit Peking for discussions. Eugene Ch'en was a member of Sun's entourage, acting as his English secretary. Wang Chingwei was senior Chinese secretary. Sun was taken ill in Peking, and when he grew worse in the latter part of February 1925, two wills, one political and the other personal, were prepared by Wang and approved by Sun. On 11 March 1925, the day before his death, Sun signed these documents in the presence of a group of his intimate associates. Eugene Ch'en wrote Sun's farewell message to the Soviet Union, which reaffirmed the Kuomintang's policy of cooperation with the Soviet Union in its struggle to liberate China from Western imperialism. Sun Yat-sen signed this document after T. V. Soong had read it. This message was later the subject of great controversy among Kuomintang members, some claiming that Sun Yat-sen, since he was on his deathbed, had not been able to study its contents adequately.

After Sun's death, Ch'en remained in Peking to edit the bilingual Kuomintang newspaper Min Pao [people's journal] . In August the paper carried a false report of the death of Chang Tso-lin (q.v.), whom Ch'en had previously described as a "butcher." Ch'en was arrested, taken to Tientsin, and thrown into prison. In December 1925 Feng Yü-hsiang's forces occupied Tientsin, and Ch'en regained his freedom. He returned to Canton, where the new National Government had been inaugurated in July 1925. At the Second National Congress of the Kuomintang, held in January 1926, Eugene Ch'en was elected to the Central Executive Committee. In May 1926 Hu Han-min, foreign minister of the Canton government, left Canton for Shanghai, and Eugene Ch'en was appointed foreign minister. In June 1926 he was named to membership on a three-man delegation, with T. V. Soong and Ch'en Kung-po (q.v.), to discuss with the Hong Kong authorities a settlement of the anti-British strike which had begun in 1925. The strike ended in September 1926. In his capacity as foreign minister, Eugene Ch'en also protested to the American consul at Canton against a projected tariff conference in Peking.

Meanwhile, the Northern Expedition under the over-all command of Chiang Kai-shek had been launched from Canton in July 1926. By October, Hankow had come under the control of the Nationalists. In mid-November the Canton government sent a five-man committee to Wuhan to investigate the matter of moving the government there. Its members were Eugene Ch'en, T. V. Soong, Sun Fo (q.v.), Hsu Ch'ien, and Borodin. On 13 December 1926 the leaders who had arrived at Wuhan organized a joint council of the Kuomintang and the National Government to act as the interim authority pending reestablishment of central control. Hsu Ch'ien was made chairman, and the members included Madame Sun Yat-sen, as well as Ch'en and the other members of the advance group from Canton. This council was the nucleus of the National Government that began to function officially at Wuhan on 1 January 1927. Eugene Ch'en gave fuller scope to his policy of anti-imperialism. In December 1926, acting in the name of the National Government, he lodged a protest with the British government because 14 Kuomintang members in the British concession in Tientsin had been arrested and handed over to Fengtien army authorities. In no uncertain words he said that the British would be held responsible for the consequences. Sir Miles Lampson, the new British minister to China, was visiting Wuhan on an inspection tour about this time, and Ch'en met with him on 11 December 1926. In the course of the interview Ch'en presented to the British minister a demand that the National Government have access to a share of the customs surplus. On 31 December, Ch'en sent a message to United States Secretary of State Frank B. Kellogg voicing his government's opposition to the British implementation of the decision made at the Washington Conference on the imposition of surcharges to the customs duty and the handing over of these sums to the authorities at the port of collection.

At the beginning of January 1927 a demonstration by workers at Hankow led to a clash with marines guarding the British concession. The Nationalists forcibly took over the concession, and a committee composed of Eugene Ch'en, Sun Fo, and T. V. Soong assumed responsibility for its administration. A few days later a similar mass action brought the British concession at Kiukiang into Chinese hands. The Japanese and French consuls at Hankow asked Ch'en for information as to any intended changes in the Japanese and French concessions ; they were told that the concessions must be handed over unconditionally. By mid- January foreign warships had begun to concentrate at Shanghai. By that time, Owen St. Clair O'Malley, the acting counselor of the British legation at Peking, had taken over the negotiations from the British consul at Hankow. The Ch'en-O'Malley notes of 19 February and 2 March 1927 confirmed the retrocession to China of the two concessions in question. Ch'en's diplomatic triumph seemed complete, and it appeared that he had begun a new era of revolutionary diplomacy for China. The March 1927 incident at Nanking, in which -a number of foreign nationals were killed or injured and foreign property was destroyed, reflected the same anti-imperialism. Foreign enterprises, particularly in the industrial center of Hankow, were forced to close their doors, and foreign citizens began to leave the Yangtze valley.

Countervailing forces were also at work, however. The foreign powers had concentrated effective military forces at Shanghai, and several of them had intervened to protect their nationals at Nanking by naval bombardment. When Chinese demonstrators attacked the Japanese concession at Hankow on 3 April 1927, they were mowed down by the machine gun fire of Japanese marines. Ch'en's so-called revolutionary foreign policy clearly was arousing powerful opposition. In view of the difficulties being experienced by the Nationalist regime in its relations with the foreign powers, Ch'en was prepared to soften his policies, but, by then, a change of policy was not feasible. Chang Tso-lin's raid on the Soviet embassy at Peking in April 1927 led Ch'en to extend "profound regrets" to the Soviet commissar for foreign affairs; and he denounced the Peking diplomatic corps for connivance in the affair. But the incident at Peking was only the first of a series of domestic counterblows at the radicalism of the Wuhan regime. A few days later Chiang Kai-shek established a rival National Government at Nanking. Ch'en was now compelled to compete with the moderate Nanking foreign minister, C. C. Wu. In May he called on the National Revolutionary Army to differentiate between anti-imperialism and anti-foreignism, a distinction that had not been clearly drawn before that time.

In April 1927 Wang Ching-wei returned from Europe to head the Wuhan regime. During the next few weeks Wang, himself a moderate, grew disturbed about the increasingly radical policies urged by the Communists and the left-Kuomintang members of his government, and in July he began a purge of these elements. Eugene Ch'en, Madame Sun Yat-sen, Borodin, and others, departed for the Soviet Union.

From Moscow, Ch'en went to Western Europe, where he remained for some three years. When the Wuhan-Nanking rapprochement along conservative lines was made official in February 1928, Ch'en was elected to both the central Executive Committee and the Central Political Council of the Kuomintang, but the appointments were merely pro forma. It was only in February 1931 that he returned to the British colony of Hong Kong. In March 1931 Chiang Kai-shek's arrest of Hu Han-min at Nanking precipitated a new anti-Chiang coalition at Canton, with the participation of Wang Chingwei, Sun Fo, C. C. Wu, T'ang Shao-yi, and the support of the military leaders of Kwangtung and Kwangsi, Ch'en Chi-t'ang and Li Tsungjen. An opposition government was set up at Canton in May 1931, and Eugene Ch'en became its foreign minister. In July he went to Japan to get arms and military advisers for Canton. This move was rationalized as being in accord with Sun Yat-sen's Pan-Asian principle, but it was hardly consonant with Ch'en's earlier antiimperialism. Moreover, the mission was undertaken at a time of bloody clashes between Japanese and Chinese in both Korea and Manchuria, with the result that Ch'en received popular condemnation.

Threatened civil war between Canton and Nanking was averted by the Japanese attack at Mukden in September 1931, and the Canton dissident regime was dissolved. On 29 December Sun Fo was appointed president of the Executive Yuan at Nanking, and Eugene Ch'en was made foreign minister in that cabinet. On 24 January 1932, less than a month after taking office, Eugene Ch'en resigned because the policies he advocated found no support among the government leaders. Sun Fo himself resigned the next day.

Ch'en lived for a time in Shanghai after leaving Nanking. In May 1932 he demanded the reorganization of the Kuomintang, and he predicted eventual war between Japan and the United States. In March 1933 he urged American intervention in the Sino-Japanese conflict as a means of avoiding the larger war he had predicted. Meanwhile, some of the southern leaders had established the Southwest Political Council, which maintained virtual autonomy in the local administration of the provinces of Kwangtung and Kwangsi. Although actually controlled by the military leaders of the two provinces, the council had the support of some veteran political leaders, including Hu Han-min and T'ang Shao-yi. Eugene Ch'en was appointed a member of the council in May 1933. In November 1933, with military support provided by the famous Nineteenth Route Army commanded by Chiang Kuang-nai and Ts'ai T'ing-k'ai (qq.v.) and with the cooperation of Li Chi-shen (q.v.), Ch'en Ming-shu (q.v.) launched the Fukien revolt. The movement began with the formation of a so-called people's revolutionary government at Fo
chow. Eugene Ch'en and his Wuhan colleague Hsu Ch'ien were among the prominent participants, and Ch'en became the foreign minister of the insurgent regime. The rebellion was short-lived, and it was easily suppressed by Chiang Kai-shek at the beginning of 1934. For his part in it, Eugene Ch'en was expelled by the Kuomintang, and he retired to Europe.

At the time of the Sino-Japanese war in July 1937 Ch'en was in Paris. He was invited by T. V. Soong and Wang Ch'ung-hui to return to China, and he arrived in Hong Kong in October 1938. Although reinstated in the Kuomintang, he declined to participate in China's wartime government and issued a statement from Hong Kong demanding that Chiang Kai-shek turn over the leadership of the government to a five-man commission. When war broke out in Europe in 1939, he advocated that China issue a declaration favoring France and England. He condemned the Hitler-Stalin pact of August 1939 and the Soviet invasion of Finland in November. After the outbreak of war in the Pacific in December 1941 and the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong, Ch'en was detained for some time and then was taken to Shanghai in the spring of 1942. There he resisted all efforts by the Japanese to persuade him to join the Japanese-sponsored regime of Wang Ching-wei in Nanking. Even while in enemy-occupied territory, Ch'en remained characteristically outspoken. He denounced the peace policy of Wang's government as a "puppet peace," and on one occasion in 1943 he was said to have referred to members of the Japanese War Office as "a pack of liars" for circulating a report that he had joined the Nanking regime. He remained in Shanghai until his death on 20 May 1944, at the age of 66.