BEIJING, March 15-- China's Jilin Publishing Group has published the Chinese version of a French book on the life and heritage of an often-forgotten corps of Chinese laborers during World War I.

According to an announcement by the publishing group on Sunday, the Chinese version, titled "WWI Chinese Laborers in France,"is not just a translation of the French book compiled by Li Ma, a Chinese-French expert on history.

Some 70 photos and an essay on published diary entries of a Chinese Labor named Sun Gan have been added to the original version, which consists of 24 articles by 28 experts from more than 10 nations, it said in a statement.

The idea of compiling such a book first struck Ma when she came across cemeteries of Chinese laborers in north France in 2002.

The often-forgotten corps of 140,000 Chinese laborers were recruited by the British and French governments in WWI to help the Allied war effort by providing logistic support and manual labor.

The two countries recruited them because they found it hard to recruit enough fighting men, let alone laborers to dig trenches, work in factories or perform other manual tasks. The first groups of Chinese laborers arrived in a French port in the summer of 1916.

Some 20,000 Chinese lost their lives in France.

According to the statement, the French book was published by the French National Center For Scientific Research in 2012. So far, the English version is not yet available.