In July 1968, during China's "Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution",[REF] Chen was born to a farming family in Sihong County in east China's Jiangsu Province,[REF] where agricultural conditions were poor.
Chen commenced studies at the Nanjing University of Chinese Medicine in 1985 and, after graduation, he worked at the No. 2 Hospital affiliated with the university, Jiangsu Academy of Social Sciences, and then Hongguang Medicine Company in Nanjing [REF].