'Forgotten' laborers of war honored

20,000 Chinese lost their lives during WWI while helping the French effort

France paid tribute on Wednesday to an often-forgotten corps of 140,000 Chinese laborers, many of whom lost their lives while helping France in World War I by digging trenches and working in weapons factories.

Jean-Yves Le Drian, France's defense minister, laid a wreath in front of a commemorative stele in a park in Paris' Chinese district to honor the little-known contribution of the laborers. A military band then played Le Marseillaise.

"Their presence at the side of the French ... on the front line of the war ... remains one of the forgotten stories of the Great War," Le Drian said.

"France does not forget those who came to our aid ... at the rear or at the front, in factories or in the trenches, the help of these Chinese workers was decisive at a terrible time in our history."

As war raged in 1916, France and Britain found it hard to recruit enough fighting men, let alone laborers to dig trenches, work in factories, collect dead bodies or perform other manual tasks.

Both countries signed a deal with China to send workers to help the Allied war effort. Many were peasants lured by the prospect of a better life.

Le Drian said the majority of these workers came from northern China.

"They left their villages, their families... crossing the ocean for a war which they did not yet know, but which would become theirs."

He said the months long voyage left some dead, and the fate of those who made it to France was often dire.

They lived in dilapidated buildings, separate from other workers, and earned "a miserable wage", said the defense minister.

"In their own way they were, on the economic front, soldiers for France as it was engaged in all-out war."

Many working on the front line "shared the horror of life in the mud and the blood of the war," he said.

Some 20,000 Chinese lost their lives for France.

After the war, 3,000 remained, forming the country's first Chinese community.

One hundred years after the start of the Great War, the largely forgotten contribution of the Chinese has come under the spotlight, and a photo exhibition is also being staged in Paris.

"I would like to thank the French government and French people for having recognized this story of the Chinese laborers, and the role of Chinese workers in the First World War," said Deng Li, a top diplomat at the Chinese embassy in France.