In time, the Malayan workers were joined by ethnic Chinese from Singapore and Malaya. Many of these are thought to have been dissidents or political protestors who were ‘deported’ to the TBR.
One of the difficulties one has in trying to estimate numbers of AFL is the way in which they were classified. Those identified as Chinese were so labelled due to ethnicity. They could have come from either Malaya or Singapore.
As with all of the other AFL groups, any statements as to numbers is conjecture based on accounts of uncertain reliability. Also, we have no knowledge of any survivor accounts being written by members of this group.