1This work changes somewhat the vision that historians have provided to this day of China’s participation in the First World War. The sending to Europe by the fragile government of Duan Qirui of around 140,000 Chinese coolies, two-thirds of whom were recruited by the British army and the rest by the French army, has always appeared as the result of dealings between Peking and the Allies in search of a workforce in service of their military logistics in the rear and at the front. Xu Guoqi demonstrates that this dispatch was also in keeping with the continuation of very active Chinese diplomacy, the aim of which was to allow China to take advantage of the Great War in order to rejoin the concert of nations and start to regain its national sovereignty so badly damaged since the Opium Wars.

2Not limiting his examination solely to the Paris Peace Conference, where it is known that China suffered a humiliating reverse over the Shandong question and from which was to emerge the May Fourth Movement of 1919, the author revisits this Chinese intervention from the upside : despite its extreme weakness in an era of its history characterised as the “warlord period”, China obtained at the Washington Naval Conference during the winter of 1921 the beginnings of the restoration of its autonomy in customs matters and re-established its sovereignty over Shandong province. In fact, these sombre years show China commencing its development as a modern nation-state that is reaching completion in our present-day era.