Sorry I didn't get to read it before the time ran out. I didnt know you couldnt renew once archived. I was looking forward to reading it aswell

If your planning on reading this book for fun, don't. This is a very scholarly tome with probably more detail than the average reader wants. The first Appendix is a timeline as to what happened in China just before WW1 and goes through to 1949 when Mao and the Red Chinese won the Civil War, and the Nationalist fled to Taiwan.

What you will find is a detailed analysis of how China helped on the Western Front by sending hundreds of thousand 'coolies' to help out on the logistic side and free "Europeans" to fight. Now this may seem counter-intuitive, but the British felt that only a "real" Britisher (read White) had the right stuff to die for King and Country.

If you follow through with Arnander's premise, China was only 'used' by the Allies, while at the same time they were left to the machinations of the Japanese who wanted (and got) most of the German colonies in the Pacific. Yes there was a lot of talk and hand ringing, but in most cases the Chinese got nothing they wanted and everything they didn't. In Versailles they were politely listened to and then the "Big Four" did exactly what they wanted.

As an aside, it's historically interesting that Ho Chi Minh, Chou Enlai and Mao Zedong were all in France during the war and saw how the 'Chinese and Japanese' were treated by the European nations.