Chen Da (sociologist)

Chen Da (1892 to 1975), whose art name was Tongfu, was a Chinese sociologist born in Lihe Village, Yuyao, Zhejiang Province. He studied at Tsinghua School in Beijing and, under the Boxer Indemnity scholarship program, in the United States, where he took his doctorate at Columbia University. Back in China he taught at Tsinghua, became professor and chair of its sociology department in 1929, and during the Sino-Japanese War moved south with the university to Kunming, where he headed the National Census Research Institute. His teaching and studies specialised in population, labor and immigration: a 1923 report for the US Department of Labor on Chinese emigration, China's Labor Issues (1929), the college textbook Population Issues (1934) and The Overseas Chinese of Southeast Asia and Fujian and Guangdong Society (1938). After 1949 he held posts at the Central University of Finance and Economics and at the Ministry of Labor.