T'an Chen (1885-18 April 1947), founding member of the conservative Western Hills faction of the Kuomintang. He served the National Government as vice president of the Judicial Yuan (1932-42) and as a member of the Government Council (1943-46).

Born into a farming family in T'aoyuan, Hunan, T'an Chen showed such intellectual promise as a boy that his family decided to excuse him from farm duties so that he could concentrate on his studies. By 1900 he had received a thorough grounding in the Chinese classics. That year, his parents died; Peking was captured during the Boxer Uprising; and T'an met a local secret society leader named Yang. These events combined to transform T'an into a rebel against the prevailing social order in China. In 1902 T'an studied at the local primary school, where he came to know a fellow townsman with revolutionary sympathies, Sung Chiao-jen (q.v.). The following year, he entered the prefectural middle school at Ch'angte. He soon was exposed to anti- Manchu periodicals published by Chinese students in Japan. About this time, the local government established a primary school and a library at the Langchiang Academy. On the opening day, local officials, members of the gentry, and students from various prefectural schools gathered to hear ceremonial oratory. As the last speech ended, T'an emerged from the crowd, jumped onto the platform, and harangued the surprised audience on the need for fundamental changes to save the country, challenging the call for loyalty to the emperor that had been made by a prominent member of the local gentry. The magistrate of Wuling was ready to arrest T'an on the spot, but the prefect of Ch'angte, who was also the superintendent of education, limited T'an's punishment to expulsion from school.

T'an Chen continued to defy the authorities after he left school. He wrote an inflamatory essay entitled Shih-li chiu-sheng [how to escape from death] in which he set forth his revolutionary ideas. His friends made copies of the essay and posted them in the busy thoroughfares, thereby attracting large crowds of readers. As T'an's name became widely known, government surveillance of his activities increased. On the advice of friends, he left Hunan and went to Japan, where he enrolled at the Kobun Institute.

In late 1903 or early 1904 Huang Hsing (q.v.) founded a revolutionary organization in Hunan, the Hua-hsing-hui [society for the revival of China]. When the society made plans with the Ko-lao-hui [society of elders and brothers] to stage an uprising in Hunan during the celebrations of the empress dowager's seventieth birthday in November 1904, Sung Chiao-jen, who was to take charge of the action in Ch'angte, asked for T'an's help. T'an returned to China and helped prepare for the uprising, but premature discovery of the plot forced him to flee Ch'angte. He escaped arrest by hiding in a friendly village. Furthermore, he found time to marry Sung Chih-chao before leaving China again for the safety of Japan. In August 1905 he became a founding member of the T'ungmeng-hui, and he was elected to its legislative council (p'ing-i-pu).

In October 1906 an armed revolutionary force composed of coal miners, secret society members, and disaffected government soldiers invaded P'inghsiang, Liuyang, and Liling in the Hunan-Kiangsi border area. Upon hearing the news, many T'ung-meng-hui members hurried back to China from Japan to participate in the rebellion. T'an returned to Changsha and established contact with revolution-minded students and troops of the New Army. The uprising was suppressed within a month, but T'an managed to escape detection by the authorities. However, he ran afoul of Hunan officialdom again when some educators in Hunan sponsored a public funeral for Ch'en T'ien-hua and Yao Hung-yeh, two Hunanese students who had committed suicide in Japan and Shanghai respectively in protest against the Ch'ing government. Despite official disapproval, the funeral, which T'an helped plan, had a large attendance. The authorities, angered by this show of public defiance, ordered the arrest of the organizers. T'an fled to Japan, where he enrolled at Waseda University. Huang Hsing sent T'an Chen to Changsha again in 1908. This time, T'an was arrested and sentenced to life imprisonment. He indoctrinated fellow prisoners and, with the help of friends and relatives, kept in touch with other revolutionaries. He later was transferred to a jail in his native T'aoyuan. There he was known to even more people, and, though incarcerated, he virtually ran the local revolutionary group. At the time of the republican revolution in 1911, T'an Chen was released from jail at the urgent request of Chiao Ta-feng, the newly proclaimed military governor of Hunan. T'an arrived at Changsha to discover that Chiao had been assassinated by supporters of the local gentry in the struggle for control of Hunan. Calling for unity, T'an joined the Hunan- Kwangsi Expeditionary Force that was setting out to help the hard-pressed revolutionary army in Hupeh. When he arrived at Wuchang, he received an appointment from Li Yuan-hung (q.v.) as secretary general in Li's office. It was as Li's personal representative that T'an went to Nanking in December to participate in consultations about establishing a provisional government.

In the spring of 1912, when Yuan Shih-k'ai, who had succeeded Sun Yat-sen as provisional president, presented to the Senate his list of cabinet members, T'an Chen sent a telegram to Yuan in which he strongly criticized his choices. Li Yuan-hung, wishing to avoid offending Yuan, dismissed T'an as his personal representative. T'an then went to Peking to assist Sung Chiao-jen in the creation of the Kuomintang. Early in 1913 T'an was elected to the National Assembly. After Sung Chiao-jen was assassinated by supporters of Yuan Shih-k'ai, T'an mercilessly attacked Yuan's policies in the National Assembly until the Kuomintang was suppressed at Peking and the so-called second revolution (see Li Lieh-chün) against Yuan broke out. When the anti-Yuan movement failed, T'an again sought refuge in Japan.

In July 1914 Sun Yat-sen reorganized the Kuomintang in an attempt to revive the revolutionary spirit of the party. In the meantime, Yuan Shih-k'ai had begun preparing the ground for the realization of his monarchical ambitions. On 23 August 1915 the Ch'ou-anhui was founded at Peking as a supposedly private society devoted to arousing popular support for Yuan. As a countermeasure, T'an and other Kuomintang leaders in Japan organized public demonstrations against Yuan among the Chinese students. Chiang Shih-li, an agent of Yuan Shih-k'ai, was then in Japan seeking to weaken the influence of the Kuomintang among Chinese students by offering them financial support and political preferment. Because most Chinese students in Japan were living in poverty, Chiang's blandishments succeeded in attracting an increasing number of students and even party members to his side. A young Hunanese, Wu Hsien-mei, presented T'an with a plan to assassinate Chiang which T'an approved. In October, Wu shot Chiang and escaped to Shanghai. T'an was arrested on suspicion of involvement in the crime but was released two weeks later for lack of evidence. When Yuan Shih-k'ai made public his intention to become monarch, the Yunnan army under the leadership of Ts'ai O (q.v.) marched against Szechwan in revolt. On orders from Sun Yat-sen, T'an Chen left Japan for Shanghai with a group of party members. They plotted with Lung Chang and Chou Chen-lin for the overthrow of T'ang Hsiangming, the military governor of Hunan. In February 1916, after several provinces had declared their independence, T'ang asked his brother T'ang Hua-lung (q.v.) to negotiate a settlement with T'an Chen and promised to leave Hunan. T'an refused to enter into an agreement with T'ang Hsiang-ming because of T'ang's past persecution of revolutionaries in Hunan. Nevertheless, T'ang withdrew his support from Yuan publicly on 29 May and left Hunan under pressure on 4 July. Soon afterwards, T'an Yen-k'ai (q.v.) became governor. With a friendly governor in power, the Hunanese members of the Kuomintang returned to their home province in large numbers. T'an then established the Cheng-i-she, with headquarters in Changsha and branches in other cities and towns, to serve as cover for Kuomintang activities. Lung Chang was elected president of the new society, and T'an served as its vice president.

After the July 1917 restoration attempt of Chang Hsün (q.v.) failed, Tuan Ch'i-jui achieved power at Peking and began a campaign to unify China militarily. He dismissed T'an Yen-k'ai from the Hunan governorship and appointed Fu Liang-tso in his place. Fu's appointment was distasteful to many Hunanese. T'an Chen plotted with such Hunanese commanders as Chao Heng-t'i (q.v.) and Lin Hsiu-mei to undermine Fu's position. In the meantime, Sun Yat-sen and others had established an opposition government at Canton. T'an went to Canton to meet with Sun, who appointed him inspector general for Hunan. After returning to Hunan, T'an worked with the Kweichow forces that had come to aid the Hunanese in their campaign against the Peiyang troops. Fu Liang-tso finally was forced out of Hunan in November 1917.

From 1918 to 1924 T'an Chen devoted himself to the consolidation of a political base for the Kuomintang in south China. At the First National Congress of the Kuomintang in January 1924, he was elected to the Central Executive Committee. That spring, he became a member of the standing committee of the Kuomintang's Hankow executive committee, which had jurisdiction over party affairs in Hunan, Hupeh, Kansu, and Shensi. In consultation with Lin Po-ch'u, Pao Hui-tseng, and P'eng Su-min, T'an appointed Liu Shaoch'i (q.v.) preparatory director of the Hunan workers branch and made Hsia Hsi director of the Hunan student branch. Both Liu and Hsia succeeded in greatly increasing Communist influence in Hunan, and T'an soon became suspicious of their intentions and opposed to the policy of Kuomintang cooperation with the Chinese Communists.

T'an Chen went to Peking for Sun Yat-sen's funeral in March 1925. He remained there and organized the T'ung-chih chü-pu, composed of Kuomintang members who had served in the Parliament. In November, he participated in the meeting of anti-Communist members of the Kuomintang known as the Western Hills Conference. The conferees set up a separate Kuomintang central party headquarters in Shanghai. Thereafter, T'an was identified as a member of the Western Hills group.

The Communist issue caused further factionalism in the Kuomintang, and the year 1927 saw the creation of opposing governments at Wuhan and Nanking. By September 1927 the Communists had been purged from the Kuomintang and the stage had been set for the reconciliation of the three major Kuomintang factions. Their representatives met in Shanghai and set conditions for party unity. The Central Special Committee, composed of thirty-two members and nine alternates drawn from all three factions, was established to serve as an interim government at Nanking. T'an became a member of the Central Special Committee and chief of its department of propaganda.

The newly achieved party unity proved extremely fragile. Wang Ching-wei (q.v.), the leader of the Wuhan group, withdrew his support almost as soon as it became known that he would not be able to control the party or the government. In October 1927 Tang Shengchih (q.v.) announced the establishment at Wuhan of a separatist Kuomintang political conference outside the jurisdiction of the Central Special Committee. T'ang's army was routed by Nanking forces in the early part of November. On 22 November, a victory celebration at Nanking turned into a riot, resulting in the death of two students and the wounding of about a dozen other people. For various reasons, the Western Hills members of the Central Special Committee were blamed for this event, and they were dismissed from their posts on 3 December. T'an left Nanking and established residence in Shanghai. In the summer of 1928, the Northern Expedition having ended, he moved with his family to Peiping. In 1930 he participated in the so-called enlarged conference movement {see Feng Yü-hsiang; Yen Hsi-shan), and in 1931 he joined the secessionist movement at Canton that began in protest of the arrest of Hu Han-min (q.v.). The Japanese attack on Mukden in September 1931 brought the latter movement to an end ; in the face of an outside threat to China, a peace conference was held in Shanghai. As a result of governmental reorganization, T'an was elected vice president of the Legislative Yuan. He resigned this post on 9 May 1932 to become vice president of the Judicial Yuan and chairman of the central civil service disciplinary commission.

In the summer of 1934 T'an toured Europe and North America, spending about six months inspecting the judicial systems of England, France, Germany, Italy, and the United States. Upon his return to China he helped to plan the establishment of the China Law Society, which was inaugurated on 20 September 1935. Following the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese war in 1937, he accompanied the National Government to Chungking. In 1943 he resigned from the Judicial Yuan to become a member of the Government Council. At war's end, T'an, who suffered from chronic asthma, flew to Shanghai for treatment. He died there on 18 April 1947.