After the founding of the People's Republic of China, from 1950 to 1957 he worked in the publicity department of Suihua, Fuyu, and Keshan counties, and became party secretary of Keshan.[1] During the Cultural Revolution, he suffered from persecution between 1967 and 1973.[1]
Heilongjiang provincial committee
From 1973 to 1981, he served as deputy director and then director of the Heilongjiang Party Committee Policy Research Office, deputy director and director of the General Office of the Provincial Party Committee, member of the provincial party standing committee and secretary-general of Heilongjiang Party Committee, and party secretary of Qiqihar City.[1][2]
From 1981 to 1984, Chen served as party secretary (then equivalent to deputy party chief) of Heilongjiang Province.[1][2] In the early 1980s, when the rest of China was implementing the household responsibility system, Heilongjiang's party chief Yang Yichen resisted the reform and the province was the last bastion of collective agriculture. Chen, a supporter of the reform, conducted an investigation in Nenjiang Prefecture in 1982, and concluded in his report that peasants supported household contracts because they directly rewarded their work and prevented abuse by officials and egalitarianism.[3] Chen's work, together with another official's investigation of conditions in other provinces, caused Yang to change his position. In a meeting in January 1983, Chen's report was approved by the provincial party committee and propagated as a policy guide. A month later, Yang lost his job as the province's party chief. He was later appointed procurator-general of the Supreme People's Procuratorate in an ostensible "promotion".[3]
