Li Dazhao
Chen was recruited to the Comintern in 1924, by Li Dazhao, as mentioned in his 1988 autobiography "My Life During Four Eras". During the 1930s he came down on the Communist side of Mao Zedong, drawing on his field research on the economic conditions of Chinese peasantry for the Institute for Social Science Research. He wrote "Landlord and Peasant in China" (1936) on this area. He was one of Mao's political theorists, and he spent time out of China in Moscow.