a contractor in North America or Australia would commission a broker in Hong Kong to sign a group of men at a certain salary to work for a term of five or ten years, expenses for their ocean passage to be deducted from wages until the debt was paid. Workers were organized in groups, with headmen serving as labor bosses (essentially gongtou or ketou). What was lacking was state enforcement of the worker’s bondedness to his employer. A worker who absconded simply lost the accumulation of any pending wages.