The Chinese Labour Corps – forgotten heroes of the First World War (part 5)

Exactly a hundred years ago in 1917 the First World War was raging across Europe. A century later in 2017 town halls and war veterans groups across Northern France, where many of the fiercest battles took place, have been staging events and commemorations to remember the Allied war dead. Mark Griffiths visited the Pas de Calais area which saw intense fighting at Cambrai, the Somme, Vimy Ridge and French Flanders to investigate one of the least-known aspects of the war – the vital role played by 140,000 Chinese labourers who provided crucial support to the Allied forces in their march towards victory.

This is the last of his five reports from France. 

Mark Griffiths at the war memorial in Oye-Plage, France, December 2017 [Photo: China Plus/Mark Griffiths]

Part 5 - Legacy of the Chinese Labour Corps

On November 11th 1918, World War One came to an end with the signing of the Armistice. However, around 80,000 members of the original 140,000-strong Chinese Labour Corps remained in France. They cleared battlefields and exhumed and re-buried tens of thousands of Commonwealth soldiers. By 1920, all those who wanted to return to China had gone back. About 3000 decided to stay behind. They and their descendants laid the foundations of today's Chinese communities in Paris, London and other European cities. The workers who returned had many stories to tell. The work the Chinese Labour Corps had done in Europe was a source of great pride in China. Chen Duxiu, a leading intellectual of the New Culture Movement commented that, "While the sun does not set on the British Empire, neither does it set on Chinese workers abroad." 

Chen Duxiu in 1937 [Photo: Public domain]

Meanwhile, the workers who had stayed behind in France hadn't been forgotten by their government. Hu Weide, China's ambassador to France, sent a telegram to the Chinese government expressing his hope that the skilled and experienced Chinese workers in France would be a source of much-needed technical knowledge when they returned home and could help to develop China's economy. "The best ones, who may be able to learn about the management of French factories,can become excellent managers in China when they return." 

Hu Weide in 1917 [Photo: Public domain]

However, the labourers who returned to China after the war arrived to find a divided nation. The economy was in tatters and their savings were soon spent. So, instead of relying on the returning workers for knowledge and skills the government sent 1500 students and apprentices to live, study and work alongside the Chinese workers who had stayed on in Europe. 

Five Chinese students, probably from the newly established Republic of China posing with two British officers at a dugout on the Western Front [Photo: National Library of Scotland]

One of the students who travelled to France and worked alongside former members of the Chinese Labour Corps was Zhou Enlai. Zhou was to become a leading figure in the Chinese Communist Party and would serve as the first Premier of the People's Republic of China, from the founding of the republic in 1949 till his death in 1976. He played a major role in the Chinese Revolution and was a key figure in the conduct of China's foreign relations.

Zhou Enlai in 1924 [Photo: Public domain]

Another student sent to France in the 1920s was a shy sixteen year old called Deng Xiaoping. After the death of Mao Zedong in 1976, Deng led China from 1978 to 1989, steering the country through many reforms and into the modern age. Having arrived in France as a 16 year old boy, Deng first spent three months learning to speak French in the northern town of Bayeux. Then he became a fitter at the Le Creusot Iron and Steel Plant in La Garenne-Colombes in north-west Paris. It was here that he first met Zhou Enlai and other future revolutionaries. Deng and Zhou shared a room until 1922 when Deng took work at Hutchinson's Rubber Factory in Montargis, about 400 kilometres south of Paris. He later worked as a fitter at the Renault factory. The former members of the Chinese Labour Corps that Zhou and Deng lived with and worked alongside turned out to be excellent role models for the first generation of China's post-revolutionary leaders.

Student Deng Xiaoping at Lyon, France, April 1921 [Photo: Public domain]

The story of China's involvement in World War One is still not widely-known. The role that 140,000 strong, brave, adventurous young men of the Chinese Labour Corps played in the conflict has almost been completely lost to history. According to Hong Kong University historian Xu Guoqi, "The mostly illiterate farmers played a crucial role not only in the war, but in shaping China's role in the new world order that emerged as empires fractured into nation-states worldwide." He went further, claiming that, "Chinese people directly helped to save Western civilization, when the Western powers were determined to kill each other with anything at their disposal."

Members of the Chinese Labour Corps [Photo: W J Hawkings Collection, courtesy of John de Lucy/Centenerynews.com]

In 2017 The Chinese Labour Corps Project was launched in the UK by the Meridian Society, a charitable organization which seeks to promote knowledge and appreciation of the best of Chinese culture, art, philosophy and history. The project commemorates the tens of thousands of Chinese workers who supported the British forces on the Western Front a hundred years ago. The 18-month project aims 'to raise awareness of the vital role played by the Chinese Labour Corps in the Great War and leave a lasting legacy of remembrance'. 

Chinese Labour Corps Project Director Peng Wenlan, 2017 [Photo: Centerarynews.com]

The director of the project Peng Wenlan said, "Our purpose is to honour this vast body of men who went to the Front and contributed to the cause. A labourer with his shovel is no less a man, no less a hero, than a soldier with his gun and his work is no less a contribution to the cause. The Chinese Labour Corps is a story that does not belong to China only. It also belongs to Britain because it was the world war that brought these two peoples together and therefore it is a shared history, a shared story." 

Events organized by the Meridian Society to raise awareness of the achievements of the Chinese Labour Corps will continue until December 2018. A campaign for a permanent memorial to the Chinese Labour Corps in London is also under way.