The Peking Government’s Overseas Chinese Industrial Policy And Security Measures For The Chinese Laborers In The World War I

After the First World War broke out, in view of China’s own weak forces and Japan’s stronglyagainst China’s entry into the war, it’s very hard for people like Yuan Shiki and Duan Qirui toachieve participation policy in the war. In order to well promote China’s integration into theinternational community, Liang Shiyi, a man of good vision and acknowledges proposed astrategy of “To work on behalf of the soldiers”. Then hundreds of thousands of Chineselaborers were far away from their homeland and went to Europe. However, PekingGovernment’s failure to early planning made British, France, and Russia Forces could recruitChinese laborers randomly all around the country. Finally, lots of disadvantages brought outduring this process, such as dispersed administrative power and rights, unknown truth,disagreement between compact rights and obligations, as well as collusion between officialand commercial which do extremely harm to people. All of these made the recruitment marketin chaos and heavily damaged to the vital interests and benefits of the broad masses oflaborers. Enable to reverse the critical situation, Peking Government established OverseasChinese Workers Affairs Bureau to regulate recruitment market, protect the legal rights andinterests of the overseas workers, and repatriate them back to their own country. The PekingGovernment made some achievements, but it was limited to those people in British andFrance, the goal of repatriating laborers in Russia still can’t achieve. Actually it’s affected bythe delicate geopolitical relationship between China and Russia, shortage of necessarydiplomatic missions and consulates, low quality of consular officials. Furthermore, PekingGovernment can’t well coordinate the conflicts of interest between the Chinese laborers andbusinessmen.