Chinese slaves fighting for the British on the Western Front, 1914-1916

I'm nearly finished A.N. Wilson's biography on Tolstoy and in it he mentions the following:

"The full extent of British exploitation of the Chinese will probably never be known, but it was the Chinese slaves, shipped over to the Diamond mines of the Transvaal, who ensured that the wealth of South Africa continued to flow into London, even after the disasters of the Boer War; just as later (though subsequent British governments all tried to hush it up and they buried the wretches in unmarked graves) it was Chinese slaves who were bought by the British and used as cannonfodder on the Western Front between 1914 and 1916" (A.N. Wilson, Tolstoy)

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I've never read any acknowledgement about this before. Does anybody know anything else about it?

donaghs

Never heard of Chinese "slave" "cannon fodder" but I think I can recall reading about Chinese "coolie" labour in WWI.
Wikipedia has this about Chinese labourers, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Labour_Corps. Doesn't seem they were treated very well, or paid much - but not really slaves in the traditional sense, or evidence of slaughter.