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 for the Communist International, and active as a member of Richard Sorge'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, Jiangsu. He graduated from Pomona College, earning Phi Beta Kappa with a BA in History in 1920. He then pursued an MA in History at The University of Chicago. In spring 1922, he enrolled at Harvard University where he obtained a PhD in history. During his time there, he assisted Charles Homer Haskins, a specialist in Medieval Europe. A year later, he left the United States for Germany, and completed his doctorate in history at Berlin University. 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, one of the founding members of the Chinese Communist Party. He kept this membership a secret until after the success of the Communist revolution in China. 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 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, then the