Working across the divide

Renewed interest in Chinese workers' contributions during WWI helps shed new light on China-Europe relationship, reports Cecily Liu.

Many people have forgotten, or are even unaware, that 140,000 Chinese workers served on the Western Front during World War I. These workers' contributions as manual labor during the war were significant, scholars say. Most of them were volunteers, farmers in search of better wages. One hundred thousand of them formed the Chinese Labour Corps under British forces, and 40,000 were employed by French factories and farms.

Chinese intellectuals then believed that the contributions of the Chinese workers would even give China an added advantage during negotiations at the Treaty of Versailles following the war, but their hopes turned out to be futile.