Chen traces his ancestry to
Putian, Fujian province, and was born on 16 September 1953 in the provincial capital
Fuzhou. He worked in his youth at a mechanics factory attached to
Fuzhou University, working there from 1970 to 1975. Shortly after the resumption of higher education at the end of the
Cultural Revolution, Chen was recommended to attend
Tsinghua University as a "
Worker-Peasant-Soldier student", where he attended undergraduate studies in chemical engineering and earned a bachelor's degree in 1978. At Tsinghua he was friends with
Xi Jinping, who was also attending Tsinghua at the time. Chen joined the
Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in November 1978. After graduating from Tsinghua he returned to Fuzhou University to become a lecturer at the Department of Chemical Engineering. In September 1979 he headed back to Tsinghua where he completed a master's degree in chemical engineering. He stayed at Tsinghua to work for the Communist Party and its affiliated
Communist Youth League of China (CYCL) as a political organizer. He served as the director of the Sports Department and deputy secretary of the CYLC Tsinghua Committee from 1982 to 1984, and as its secretary from 1984 to 1990. Between 1990 and 1992 he went on a stint at
Stanford University as a visiting scholar for chemical engineering research. In 1992, he became the deputy party secretary of the Chemical Engineering Department at Tsinghua University. Beginning in August 1993, he became the deputy secretary of the party committee at Tsinghua, becoming executive deputy secretary two years later. In 2002 he became secretary of the Tsinghua party committee and concurrently chairman of the University Council. == Political career ==