Who's Who in China (3rd edition)/Ch'en Yu-jen

Mr. Eugene Chen

陳友仁字友仁

(Chen Yu-jen)

Mr. Eugene Chen is a Cantonese who was born abroad. He is British-educated and has had a legal training. In 1912 he acted as legal adviser to the Ministry of Communications, Peking, during the premiership of Tang Shao-yi, who formed the first Cabinet under the Republican regime in China. Besides other dailies, he owned and edited the Peking Gazette. His first notable work in the cause of renascent China was done on that paper. Mr. Chen has suffered imprisonment in the cause of liberty. In May 1917, the powerful pro-Japanese section of the then Peking administration caused him to be arrested, shortly after midnight, for an article which had appeared in the Peking Gazette, disclosing and denouncing certain sinister negotiations which later developed into the China-Japan Military Pact of 1918. After a term of incarceration in two Peking jails, which somewhat impaired his health, Mr. Chen was liberated in pursuance of a Presidential mandate ordering his release. He left Peking soon after for Shanghai, where he was in close touch with Dr. Sun Yat-sen and other Southern leaders during the eventful months which followed the second forcible dissolution of Parliament in 1917. When the Military government at Canton decided to despatch a diplomatic mission to the United States in the summer of 1918, Mr. Chen was selected as a member, his colleagues being Quo Tai-chi and C. T. Wang. Mr. Chen was sent as a technical delegate in the Southern section of the Chinese delegation to the Peace Conference at Paris in 1919. He prepared some of the principal documents of the delegation, including an important memorandum which set forth China's case for the abrogation of the treaties and not 28 connected with Japan's Twenty-One Demands. The late Dr. George E. Morrison, who was attached to the delegation as a political advisor, declared that this memorandum was the ablest state paper which the Chinese delegation had submitteed for the consideration of the Peace Conference. After the Peace Conference, Mr. Chen went to London and visited various centers of continental Europe, investigating post-war conditions and studying, on the spot, the political and economic problems arising out of the vast litter and profound changes caused by the war. After an absence of nearly three years in America and Europe, Mr. Chen returned to China in the summer 1920. On his arrival at Canton, President Sun Yat-sen immediately appointed him to an important office. Late in 1924 when Dr. Sun Yat-sen gave up his post at Canton, he was accompanied by Mr. Chen.