Hi Radcliff. Where did you read it?
China sent some 140,000 labourers to France and Belgium, and the mud and barbed wire of the Western Front. They dug trenches, carried ammunition, toiled in docks and railway yards or worked in arms factories.
Nearly 100,000 Chinese labourers served near the front lines in Flanders, together with a few hundred Chinese students who were taken along as interpreters. Over 40,000 more Chinese were scattered across France, working in the factories. They were volunteers, mostly poor farmers from coastal provinces like Shandong and Hebei, and some from Liaoning, Jilin, Jiangsu, Hunan, Anhui and Gansu. Attracted by high pay ( four times more than a labourer back in China ) and contracts that falsely promised they would be kept safely away from the fighting. They were neutrals until China declared war on Germany in 1917, then they were paid as volunteers in a nominally civilian Chinese Labour Corps. They endured military discipline and served under British officers.
