 In 1956, the American government reached an agreement with the PRC to permit Chinese students in the US to go home, who had been banned from moving back to China since the Korean War.Chen and his wife decided to return to China with their two daughters.On the invitation of the renowned metallurgist Ye Zhupei (Yap Chu-Phay), he accepted the position as Director of the Hydrometallurgical Laboratory of the Institute of Chemical Metallurgy (renamed as the Institute of Process Engineering in 2001), which was then being established by Ye under the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS).