He was the editor of the journal Chinese Historians and associate editor of the Journal of American–East Asian Relations. The recipient of several major academic awards in China, Chen has also received two grants from the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and was awarded a fellowship at the Norwegian Nobel Institute in 1993. Chen's extensive publications in English and Chinese include articles in China Quarterly and Diplomatic History. He is the author of China's Road to the Korean War: The Making of the Sino-American Confrontation (1994) and co-editor of Chinese Communist Foreign Policy and the Cold War in Asia (1996).