Why are there not many real chinese people in the cast ?

If I recall correctly the film's orginal publicity, Gardner plays a Eurasian born of one Russian and one Chinese parent.

'55 Days' was made by a Hollywood director for a studio that knew its U.S., British, and Commonwealth audiences would be more likely to spend to see actors whose faces they recognized and whose reputations they esteemed instead of then-unknown Chinese actors. It also didn't augur well for the casting of Chinese that, back then, Mao was just beginning to inflict deliberately and pitilessly on the Chinese people the denunciations and kangaroo court trials (for "counterrevolutionary thoughts and acts"), and the mass-starvations, imprisonments, and slaughters of his so-called "Cultural Revolution."

Most of all there were almost no Chinese actors in major roles because, after all, cinema is all about PRETEND.

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I don't know why the thread question is such a mystery. It was standard practice in American and most European movies from the earliest days of film until well into the 60s to cast Occidental actors in leading (though not supporting) Oriental roles. Think of the Charlie Chan films (C.C. was played by two Swedes!), Mr. Moto (by a Hungarian), "Ann and the King of Siam" and "The King and I" (a Thai played by a Brit and a Russian), and scores more. Not to mention such unlikely casting as Robert Armstrong (Carl Denham of the 1933 "King Kong") playing Hideki Tojo in James Cagney's movie "Blood on the Sun" (1945), or Englishman H.B. Warner as Chang the Tibetan in "Lost Horizon" (1937), which brought him an Oscar nomination.

Secondary, non-romantic roles were usually assigned to actual Chinese or Japanese or Korean (or whatever) actors. Of course, "Oriental" actors of one nationality routinely got roles playing other Oriental nationalities, especially during the war, when most Japanese were interned in the US, and Korean or Chinese actors played Japanese, but again these were always in supporting parts. A Chinese actor in Britain named Ley On played an Eskimo in "49th Parallel" (1941).

The Occidental actors in "55" who played lead Chinese roles were Flora Robson, Leo Genn and Robert Helpmann. For the era, I thought Robson and especially Helpmann did a very convincing job, but Genn was hopelessly unbelievable.

Such casting is no longer "p.c.", of course, but even so, a person like Chow Yun-Fat got cast as the King of Siam in the recent "Anna and the King", and he is very definitely not Thai. I suppose it's similar to an actor of English descent playing a German, or an Italian playing a Greek, all of which is the rule, not the exception, in Hollywood. Look at all the "ethnics" (including a Filipino, a Chinese and an Eskimo) Anthony Quinn played -- among dozens of other ethnicities (Greeks, Italians, American Indians, Russians, Portugese, Mexicans -- everything except an Irishman, which Quinn half was).

No, more often than not, portrayals of Asians by whites are usually just caricatures and not "real" acting. I shudder to think what would have happened had Madonna gotten her way when she lobbied for a role in Memoirs of a Geisha.