Chen Han-seng, the Institute of Pacific Relations, and Changing Ideas About the Chinese Rural Economy

The famous sociologist, economist, and historian Chen Han-seng was the founder of the Agrarian China Research Association, publishing influential studies on industrial production and class relations, and their effect on peasant living standards. Through the Institute of Pacific Relations (ipr), Chen engaged in a theoretical dialogue with liberal intellectuals and responded to American, British, and Soviet theories about Chinese society and rural China. Unlike American ipr scholars, such as John Lossing Buck, whose agenda was to investigate the consumer power of Chinese peasants, Chen’s study of living standards emphasized their production capability and the role usury played in it. And unlike the ipr British economists, such as R. H. Tawney, who were generally optimistic about Chinese rural industry, Chen’s research proved Chinese industrialization to be unsustainable and to lower peasant living standards. In reaction to these American and British scholars, Chen tactically changed his concept of “living standards” and developed his own theory of Chinese rural economics.