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Gung Ho is the slogan and nickname of the International Committee for the Promotion of Chinese Industrial Cooperatives, a project founded by Rewi Alley to foster genuine democratic cooperatives in various parts of China. The New Zealand China Friendship Society supports this movement both materially and morally as one of our major projects.

 

 

In 2001 the ICCIC signed an agreement with the Canadian Cooperative Association to open a Cooperative Promotion and Development Office to promote the cooperative form to Chinese enterprises across the country.

Over a dozen cooperative seminars have been held to inform urban and rural people of the benefits of the cooperative form and how to go about creating a cooperative. In addition, the Office organised three “Training of Trainers” workshops in 2002 to add to the personnel able to conduct such seminars.

Participants have come from all walks of life. As a result of these initiatives, ICCIC services are now being used by about 32 cooperative organisations representing 1227 members, six government agencies, and 41 persons in eight NGOs working with five thousand disadvantaged people.

Most promising are the emergence of over forty rural cooperatives in regions of poverty, including several new women’s cooperatives (bamboo products, tea, shoes), and eight urban cooperatives in Shanghai and Beijing (furniture, transport, string belts, fast-foods, carving.

Cooperatives have been set up as far afield as Sichuan, Hebei, Henan, Shanghai, Guizhou, Anhui, and Jilin.

The growing relevance of ICCIC is also apparent in its ability to lobby the government on such things as the new law on cooperative enterprises. At a time when the government is committed to the alleviation of poverty, the ICCIC can play a vital role in helping rural people find ways to raise their living standards through cooperative endeavours.

Cooperative members in Chengdu learn to handle new-model spinning wheels

As field secretary Rewi regularly travelled thousands of kilometres, often by hitch-hiking or bicycle.

Rewi visiting a Gung Ho co-operative in Xinxiang, Henan Province in 1983

The executive committee of Gung Ho after its meeting 16 November 2000 in the Youxie Museum, Beijing. From left: Xiao Weixiang, Michael Crook (V-Ch), Mu Jingmei (Project Officer), Pat Adler, Lu Wanru (V-Ch), Bill Willmott, Guo Lina (Exec. Sec.), Wang Houde (Chairman), Lu Suhui (Accountant), Zhang Longhai, Tang Zongkun. (Mr Zhang Longhai was formerly Chinese Ambassador to NZ)

The Gung Ho movement has a long history. In 1938, Rewi Alley, Peg and Edgar Snow, and some other friends in Shanghai together set up an International Committee for the Promotion of Chinese Industrial Cooperatives. At that time, the Japanese invaders had already captured most of China's industrial cities and looked to occupy all of China in the near future. Rewi's plan was to establish small producer cooperatives throughout China that could contribute substantially to the war effort at the same time as they advanced the ideals of cooperation that Rewi and many others espoused as the hope for China's economic future.

The Chinese name for "China Industrial Cooperatives" was Zhongguo Gongye Hezhoushe. This was abbreviated as Gong He (the first characters for the two words for "Industrial Cooperatives"), or "Gung Ho", as it was then written. Rewi adopted this as the logo for the movement, and it can be translated as "working together", which was a perfect slogan for the movement as a whole.

With Madame Soong Ching Ling (Sun Yatsen's widow) as its leader and Rewi as field secretary, the movement took off, and within two years there were over 3,000 cooperatives scattered through sixteen provinces with more than 300,000 members. It collected money all over the world from people sympathetic to China's struggle against Japanese imperialism. In New Zealand, CORSO began its life supporting the Gung Ho movement.

After 1942, when Rewi Alley was dismissed from Gung Ho by Chiang Kaishek's corrupt government, he shifted his attention to the Bailie Schools, and the Gung Ho movement gradually petered out.

Forty years later, when Rewi was already 85, he realised that the government reform policies under Deng Xiaoping opened the door for a revival of the Gung Ho movement. Together with several of the war-time leaders of Gung Ho, he resurrected the movement and gained support from various cooperative federations and foundations around the world. They began to foster small cooperatives in Beijing, Hubei, (where Rewi had done flood relief in 1932) and Shandan (Gansu, where Rewi had led the Bailie School for eight years 1944-52), and other centres. When he died in 1987, his colleagues continued the work and recruited many more to the committee from Australia, Canada, Belgium, Germany, Japan, Mexico, UK, USA. Eight of our members are on the committee, and our president is on the executive.

In 1992, the New Zealand China Friendship Society made a substantial contribution to a handicapped workers' garment cooperative in Honghu. We obtained a subsidy from the Voluntary Association Subsidy Scheme of our government's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, and our total contribution of NZ $4,000 helped the cooperative to buy sewing machines that enabled it to expand its membership and get overseas contracts. Today this cooperative is flourishing with a membership of over sixty producing sportswear for a Swiss company as well as work clothing for local factories.

In remote Shandan, the poorest region of Gansu, twelve cooperatives have been established, including a paper mill, a flax mill, an experimental farm, a plastic recycling plant, and a soap factory. Although the technology is primitive and markets limited, these cooperatives are providing, not only employment for young people who might otherwise have to leave their home town, but also training in industrial skills and cooperative principles that will enhance the welfare of the district in the future. The NZCFS takes an interest in these cooperatives and visits them frequently.

Most recently, women leaders in Gung Ho have encouraged the establishment of rural women's cooperatives in Baoding Prefecture south of Beijing. Kathleen Hall worked in this area in the 1930s and 1940s, and her memory has inspired several local women to pursue the movement with enthusiasm. The NZCFS carried out a major campaign in 1992-3 that raised NZ$9,000, which, together with a VASS subsidy, amounted to a contribution of NZ$45,000 for several women's cooperatives in the region, including knitting and sewing garments, growing mushrooms and breeding scorpions (used in Chinese medicine!). Part of the grant was also used for workshops to train local women to overcome the limitations of their village education and strike out together to build a better future through women's cooperatives.

In the small village of Songjiazhuang, where Kathleen Hall ran her clinic sixty years ago, the women have just established a women's health cooperative to open a new clinic. Our funds will help them buy setting-up equipment such as an X-Ray, pharmaceuticals and furniture. This clinic was officially opened in June 2000.

In November 2000, NZCFS President Bill Willmott went to China for a week to visit the women's Gung Ho cooperatives in Baoding Prefecture (just south of Beijing) that NZCFS has helped to get started. He was heartened by the work the Baoding Women's Federation is doing to foster women's co-operatives in both village and city. A knitting co-operative in a small village is providing work and income for fifty-seven women who would otherwise be left behind by the current reform policies. A school bus cooperative in Baoding City is solving three problems at once: work for unemployed women, transport for the children of working mothers, and the problems of dangerous traffic congestion at school gates four times a day.

While in Beijing, he attended a meeting of the executive of Gung Ho and was greatly impressed with the dedication and wisdom of the executive members and of the secretariat (four women) leading the work.