Noted Belgian Sinologist Philip Vanhaelemeersch is the director of the Confucius Institute at Hogeschool West-Vlaanderen, the University of Applied Sciences in West Flanders, Belgium. An expert on the history of Chinese workers in World War I, also known as the Chinese Labor Corps, he has extensively interviewed the descendants of many of those workers who came from China’s Shandong and Hebei Provinces. He is also the Dutch translator of the memoirs of two World War I workers, Reminiscences on My Work During the European War by Gu Xingqing and Memoirs of a Chinese Worker by Sun Gan and his descendants.

A photograph of Philip Vanhaelemeersch.

Philip Vanhaelemeersch

On November 11, 1918, the Allied Forces and Germany signed an armistice to end the tragic World War I that began in 1914. China has a significant, though often overlooked, association with the war.

From 1916 to 1918, the British and French armies recruited about 140,000 Chinese farm workers and sent them to various battlefields in Europe to dig trenches, repair fortifications and build roads and bridges. They also did other more hazardous and grueling work like rescuing the wounded, burying corpses, cleaning up battlefields and clearing mines. They came to be known as the “Chinese workers in WWI,” dubbed the Chinese Labor Corps by World War I historians.

These men, mostly in their 20s and 30s, were not soldiers. They “used shovels instead of guns” to contribute considerably to the victory of the Allies in World War I and even beyond that, to post-war reconstruction. Nearly 20,000 of them died in the course of their backbreaking work. Mostly illiterate farmers, they worked more than 12 hours far from home with little rest or emotional support. Qu Xing, UNESCO Deputy Director General and former Chinese ambassador to Belgium, graphically described the overwhelming work they did, “If one person dug one meter of trench a day, that would be 140 kilometers dug by 140,000 people a day. If one person carried one shell a day, that would be 140,000 shells carried by 140,000 people a day.”

Thanks to these workers’ contribution in the Allied victory in World War I, China was able to attend the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 as one of the victorious nations. However, the conference disregarded China’s status as a victorious nation due to its weak economy and lack of political strength at that time. The slight triggered protests by the workers and Chinese students, who surrounded the Paris Peace Conference venue where the Chinese delegation was in an attempt to prevent the signing of the Treaty of Versailles. It was regarded as a detrimental treaty for China since while ending the war; it betrayed China’s interests and gave Japan control over parts of Chinese territory. The slight to China continued at the sports tournament in Belgium hosted by Britain. The flags of all other victorious nations and participating countries were flown at the venue save China’s. It led to more protests by Chinese workers.

The Chinese Labor Corps gave their blood and sweat for a war in Europe that was far from their home but their contribution remains underestimated and even forgotten. Philip Vanhaelemeersch shines a light on the invaluable role they played and how that has created a legacy for China’s exchange and cooperation with Europe today.

CNS: Why has the Western academic circle, including their war historians and scholars, forgotten the Chinese Labor Corps?

Philip Vanhaelemeersch: One reason for that is technical. Most of the experts who study the history of WWI do not know Chinese. In some battlefield sites in France and Belgium, we have the areas called the “Chinese Corner” where you can see the gravestones of some of the Chinese Labor Corps, carved with their names, the places they came from, and the identification numbers assigned to them. But if you don’t know Chinese, it would be impossible to decipher this information. This has resulted in the lack of detailed historical information that is necessary for in-depth research.

Another reason is the misconception about their work. Although they were in the battlefield, they were considered logistics personnel who did not fight. So many experts on the military history of WWI think they were not important and do not include them in their research. Some people, in particular, see the Chinese workers in WWI as mere laborers who did simple menial work like carrying bags of supplies at the port docks. Although some Chinese workers did do that, many of them were skilled hands who could repair the machines and tanks in the battlefield. Besides, the corps also included educated men who knew foreign languages and acted as translators. The Chinese workers in WWI had their own stories and their own way of thinking, and it is very biased and inaccurate to regard them as only manual laborers.

CNS: Now that their historical status is being increasingly recognized, how do people look at their contributions in the Allied victory in WWI?

Philip Vanhaelemeersch: During WWI, while Britain, France and other Allied powers recruited laborers from India, Egypt, South Africa and other countries as well, about 140,000 men were recruited from China, accounting for the largest group of foreign laborers. Therefore, you can say the history of WWI is incomplete without mention of the Chinese laborers.

These men, though they did not actually fight, probably still influenced the course of the war on a daily basis. When they arrived in Europe in 1916, the Allies were facing a serious shortage of manpower as battles such as the Battle of the Somme saw tens of thousands of casualties in one day. So, the Chinese workers made up for the much-needed manpower of the Allied powers and provided vital logistic services. Many in the West think that without the Chinese workers, the Allied victory might have been pushed back.

Even after the war ended, the workers had to wait for several months before they could return home due to the insufficient transport, and the last batch returned home only in 1919. While they waited to return home, many of them took part in post-war reconstruction work such as cleaning up battlefields, continuing to contribute to the Allied Force work. Some even stayed on in France, becoming the first Chinese immigrants there.

CNS: You translated and published Reminiscences on My Work During the European War by Gu Xingqing, a member of the Chinese Labor Corps. On November 11, 2018, the centenary of the end of WWI, a ceremony was held in Paris to commemorate the armistice, and a Chinese-American girl read out from the diary of Gu Xingqing. It was an entry he had written on that very day 100 years ago. What do you think of that?

Philip Vanhaelemeersch: I was personally involved in that. I was contacted by the organizing committee through a French documentary maker. The director wanted to have young people from different ethnic groups read out articles on the armistice, and these articles had to be written on November 11, Armistice Day. Gu Xingqing’s memoir had a chapter on the armistice, including a diary entry written on that day, so I sent that section to the organizing committee.

On November 11, the day of the celebration, I did not go to Paris, but to the Nolette Chinese Cemetery in France with students and teachers of our Confucius Institute. The Nolette Chinese Cemetery in the town of Noyelles-sur-Mer in northern France is the largest Chinese Labor Corps cemetery in Europe with over 800 graves, and we paid tribute to them together with the Chinese living in France. Then I received a photo of the girl reading from Gu Xingqing’s diary in Paris.

I was overcome with emotion. A grand event remembering the Chinese workers in WWI was being held in Paris, a city that most of the workers had never been to, and at the same time, we were having our commemoration at the cemetery. I think of that day as one of the most meaningful ones in the history of commemorating the Chinese Labor Corps.

CNS: In 2017, your translation of the memoir of Sun Gan, another member of the Chinese Labor Corps and his descendants, came out. Sun Gan was a teacher before he went to Europe, and some scholars consider that educated men like him, who were recruited to the Labor Corps, opened a window for the Chinese to know the world.

Philip Vanhaelemeersch: When I translated the memoirs of Sun Gan and Gu Xingqing, I was impressed by the Chinese curiosity about the outside world. After work, Sun Gan would sit in the classroom of the elementary school in France and jot down what happened in the class. Gu Xingqing, on the other hand, wrote about many common daily activities, like how Belgians drank beer and how the French dressed. At first, I thought, is this worth translating into Dutch? Later, I realized it was significant because it reflected the Chinese passion to know the world.

Sun Gan returned to his hometown in Shandong in 1919. After his return, he was often asked to talk about his work and life in Europe, and those who heard him told the stories to others. In this way, probably thousands of people got to know the Western world through Sun Gan, and satisfied their curiosity about the West. Many of them never had the chance to go abroad in their life, not even to any large city in China, so Sun Gan’s tales served as a window to the outside world for them.

Sun later founded a school in the village. He told the students about his work and life in Europe, just the way teachers at the Confucius Institutes today tell students about China. That was a real cultural exchange between China and the West.

CNS: You once said that the Chinese Labor Corps are an important link between Europe and China, and have left a valuable legacy for exchanges and cooperation between Europe and China.

Philip Vanhaelemeersch: We always talk about “exchange” and “cooperation.” I think communication can be as simple as two people sitting down and talking. Cooperation means working together for the same goal, which may be more important than simple communication.

The Chinese Labor Corps can be regarded as an important group of Chinese laborers sent overseas. There were Chinese working abroad even before that but it was not a normal labor relationship. The situation of the Chinese workers in WWI was certainly not “normal” either, as it was a time of war, but Britain offered labor contracts when recruiting them, which had never been done before. In my opinion, the Chinese workers in WWI opened a new chapter in the history of Chinese laborers working overseas.

After arriving in Europe, although most of the workers had to do heavy manual labor and the local Europeans were their supervisors, still they worked together and to some extent, an embryonic form of cooperation emerged, which I think laid the foundation for future exchanges and cooperation between Europe and China.

(Interviewed by De Yongjian)