Does Chen's work pose a problem for ToE?

But the new fossils have become nothing less than a challenge to the theory of evolution in the hands Chen, a professor at the Nanjing Institute of Paleontology and Geology. Chen argued that the emergence of such a sophisticated creature at so early a date show that modern life forms burst on the scene suddenly, rather than through any gradual process.
According to Chen, the conventional forces of evolution can't account for the speed, the breadth, and one-time nature of "the Cambrian Explosion," a geological moment more than 500 million years ago when virtually all the major animal groups first appear in the fossil record.Rather than Charles Darwin's familiar notion of survival of the fittest, Chen said he believes scientists should focus on the possibility that a unique harmony between forms of life allowed complex organisms to emerge. If all we have to depend upon is chance and competition, the conventional forces of evolution, Chen said, "then complex, highly evolved life, such as the human, has no reason to appear."The debate over Haikoulla casts Western scientists in the unlikely role of defending themselves against charges of ideological blindness from scientists in Communist China. Chinese officials argue that the theory of evolution is so politically charged in the West that researchers are reluctant to admit shortcomings for fear of giving comfort to those who believe in a biblical creation."Evolution is facing an extremely harsh challenge," declared the Communist Party's Guang Ming Daily last December in describing the fossils in southern China. "In the beginning, Darwinian evolution was a scientific theory.... In fact, evolution eventually changed into a religion."Taunts from the Communist Party wouldn't carry much sting, however, if some Western scientists weren't also concerned about weaknesses in so-called neo-Darwinism, the dominant view of evolution over the last 50 years."Neo-Darwinism is dead," said Eric Davidson, a geneticist and textbook writer at the California Institute of Technology. He joined a recent gathering of 60 scientists from around the world near Chengjiang, where Chen had found his first impressions of Haikouella five years ago.

Davidson & Erwin: Neo-Darwinism Doesn't Work for the Cambrian Explosion
Paul Nelson
Seven years ago, I was sitting outside a hotel in China waiting for lunch to start (yes, I worked at gaining weight back then), when Caltech developmental biologist Eric Davidson walked up and asked me why I was carrying a diagram from one of his papers. The diagram depicted the complex control region of the Endo16 gene in sea urchins. I told him that I wanted to ask conference participants what process they thought had constructed the highly specified genetic circuitry (over a dozen DNA-binding proteins, interacting at nearly three dozen binding sites, to construct the sea urchin gut) -- what Davidson described as "information processing units 'wired' into the regulatory network so that they receive multiple inputs" (2001, p. 7).
Davidson smiled, somewhat ruefully, and said, "Well, I'm not sure, but I know that standard single-base-pair mutations won't do it" -- meaning, as he later explained to me, the textbook neo-Darwinism every college biology student learns. He was more blunt with the science writer Fred Heeren, who was covering the now-notorious conference we were attending. "Neo-Darwinism is dead," he said in an interview.Davidson brought his case for the insufficiency of standard evolutionary theory to the pages of Science this past week. Writing with the paleontologist Doug Erwin, he argued that the "establishment by the Early Cambrian of virtually all phylum-level body plans" is not explained by the usually-invoked evolutionary processes

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Is this validation of longstanding Creationist/ID criticism in this arena

The criticism of ID is that it never happens; this research seems to indicate one instance where it didn't happen.

What are you talking about here?

What about Davidson's work? Shouldn't issues related to the Cambrian explosion be allowed besides Chen's find?

Also, are we allowed to point out the Chinese scientists think the Western scientific community is ignoring hard data and not viewing the evidence objectively.

The contention of this paper is natural selection and random mutation explain all of the diversity of life on Earth except for this one instance, apparently.

Is this validation of longstanding Creationist/ID criticism in this arena, and what do EVCers think about the idea that the evolutionary time-scale is compressed from 50 million to 2-3 million, and that this is insufficient time to explain by random mutations and natural selection the explosion of life forms we see during that period.

Not really, and if want to call the Cambrian explosion, one instance, well, I have to laugh at that comment considering all major phyla appeared at that time.

I have been of the opinion that evolution isn't just random mutation and natural selection for some time.