Chinese units in World War I
Chinese Army
The [[Wikipedia:History_of_the_Republic_of_China#World_War_I_and_brief_Manchu_restoration|Republic of China] formally entered the war on the allied side in 1917 and captured some German ships that were hiding in China. China was in a state of civil war at this time and some factions opposed entry into the war. Chinese forces also took part in the allied intervention in the Russian Civil War.
Chinese labourers recruited by other countries
'Chinese workers helped rebuild war-torn Europe, says Hong Kong University historian Xu Guoqi. About 140,000 worked for American, British and French troops in France, his research shows. Up to half a million Chinese workers laboured on the eastern front for Tsarist Russia, before the empire crumbled in the 1917 Communist revolution, according to the unpublished research of historian Li Zhixue of Jinan University.'[1].
Sources
- South China Morning Posts' The forgotten army of the first world war: How Chinese labourers helped shape Europe
- Chatham House publication First World War: China's forgotten foreign legion by Helen Fitzwilliam in The World Today, June 2014, Volume 70, Number 3
- China on the Western Front, a short film by Helen Fitzwilliam
- Wikipedia:Chinese Labour Corps contains further published references
- Gregory James, The Chinese Labour Corps 1916-1920 (Bayview Educational, 2013, ISBN 9789881268600).
