The Work-Study program was renewed, though on a different basis, bringing less educated workers rather than students. By March 1916 their Paris group, the Société Franco-Chinoise d'Education () was directly involved in recruiting and training these workers. The Société had well-placed French backers, mostly on the political left, including Alphonse Aulard, the first president of the Société, a professor of French history at the Sorbonne; Marius Moutet, vice-president and a socialist member of the National Assembly from Lyon; and Édouard Herriot, mayor of Lyon. They pressed the French government to give the Chinese workers technical education as well as factory work. Li wrote extensive articles in the "Chinese Labor Journal" (Huagong zazhi), which introduced readers to Western science, arts, fiction, and current events. By 1917, the Society had established feeder schools in Beijing, Baoding, and Changxingdian, in North China. Students in Hunan wanted to found a preparatory school, but the provincial government at Changsha refused to help. A delegation went to Beijing in February 1918 to consult with Li and Cai. The financial support they obtained from the Beijing government attracted even more students from Hunan, including Mao Zedong. Cai and Li told student leaders that the government had little money but would lend them transportation funds, in return, students would be expected to teach laborers in France. The first group of thirty students to go to France repaid the loan within five months, allowing two groups a year to follow. The new students came from a wide background. The Work-Study movement now offered overseas study to those whose education stopped at the middle-school level or below. The preparatory schools at Baoding and Changxingdian required only that applicants have basic Chinese and that they not possess "bad habits" such as smoking or gambling. The low tuition fees charged by the preparatory schools and the specially reduced boat fares Li Shizeng negotiated with French authorities also increased the numbers of students who could come on the program. In 1919 and 1920, even after the signing of the peace, the Sino-French Education Association sponsored 17 groups of Chinese students, totaling nearly 1,600, who were placed in factories and schools, including increased numbers of students from the poorer inland provinces of Hunan and Sichuan. Among these were the future leader of the Chinese Communist Party, Deng Xiaoping, then 16 years old, who had been recruited by Wu Yuzheng in Chongqing, and Xu Teli, then in his early 40s, the future commissar of education at Yan'an in 1937.