REWI ALLEY SPEAKS FROM CHINESE CENTRAL ASIA

Grey River Argus, 21 February 1949, Page 7

REWI ALLEY SPEAKS FROM CHINESE CENTRAL ASIA

. A talk recorded, last year, in Chinese Central Asia by Rewi Alley, Headmaster of the Bailey 1.N.D.N.5.C.O. Training School and Experiment Centre for Chinese Industrial Cooperatives, was as follows: — It is good to be able to talk to New Zealand for many reasons. The first is to be able to thank everyone for the gallant help CORSO has made available to us here in Sandan. It is a very long way from the South Pacific to. Chinese Central Asia. We are grateful that our friends have had the vision and the generosity to put their strength behind our efforts here. Their help has meant very much to us. Without it we could certainly not have been able ta carry on all the work we have done this past year. In the difficult times that face this part of our world, we should be left without much hope for the future, were it not for our friends everywhere. Every aspect of our wo?-k for the better village is one of struggle; every encouragement valuable. "It is good, to, to have the opportunity this little wire recorder gives me of saying why we here feel it is a nrivilege to be able to work with people in the Chinese hinterland for the better world we hope for. One might start where the speaker started, twenty-two years ago. An average New Zealander, back from the first world war, and with a fresh defeat on one’s hands after six years’sheepfarming in the Taranaki bush. Working one’s way across the Pacific as a wireless watcher, on a ship repatriating indentured labour. To Shanghai in the midst of a revolution, with the intent of getting back home as soon as possible. Then a subsequent eleven years as a factory inspector for the international settlement of that city, with various experiences in the hinterland on relief work. So began one very ordinary man’s _ adventure in understanding, and with un-1 derstanding, the need for action, for understanding brings responsibility we cannot evade. The last time I went home I met an old bush friend, now i.e;,id A.simple direct man of consulerable intellect, who had lived all his life with nature. He said, “Well Rewi, what have you learnt?’’ scratching an ancient scab on the top of his head, “What have you discovered?’’ “I’ve discovered gold,” I answered, "Lots of it. It will make the world richer. It's lying around, and no none wants it.” He did not say anything for a while, and then he gave a great sigh as he heaved himself uo to pour me another cup of tea..“ Yes, I always thought the country people of China were that..So you found it out, and it’s true..” What he had felt, and what I had found out, was that the ordinary man in China, was perhaps the world’s greatest potential asset — peaceloving, hardworking, steady and frugal, able to use all that science has discovered, as it should be used. There is inflation. Transport is incredibly difficult. The coast prospers, but lhe villages are poorer than ever. There is obviously much that can be done to help. Some two hundred years ago,. China was perhaps the greatest industrial nation in the world. Its industrial guilds had immense power. They were a kind of co-operative organsation which operated in spite of the top-heavy bureaucracy of the imperial days which surrounded them; and in spite of all the difficulties of transport’. Then came the machine, the impact of the West, the rise of Japan, and of coastal industry. Slowly industry in the villages came to a stop, as its markets were lost through competition. With increasing poverty in the villages, unsettled conditions became prevalent. In many parts irrigation system fell into disuse, trees were cut down, houses even sold for fuel.

How, then did the cities fare? As they grew, so grew the sweatshops which could only compete by long hours, and underpaid labour, with the West, with Japan, with other competitors. A decade of factory inspection amongst the tired working children of the four thousand Shanghai factories and workships, made one wonder more than ever, how the way could be found back to the kind of industry that could replace the old industry of the village. How to adapt the machine for rural use? What kind of industrial organisation to give the village, which would give small scale industry some of the advantages of the bigger industries of the coast?

And so came Gun Ho, which means “Work together.” It organised crippled soldiers, coastal refugees, peasants, workers of many kinds, into a chain of co-operatives _ that spread through unoccupied China. It made the blankets for the Chinese army, in places where the art of spinning and weaving had been forgotten. It showed that the ordinary man had the ability to work together and to produce 'results. It showed its promoters other things, however. It showed that the hinterland was almost bereft of technicians, and that when the coastal refugees flocked back to their old haunts, a start would have to be made again with local talent. It showed that promoters and technicians would have to come from those groups of people from which the cooperative membership came. The end of the war came at long last. With it came inflation, which made financing institutions give loans at traders’ rates. The small producer was badly' hit. It was a gay time of speculation on the coast. The prevarious foothold industry had gained in the interior was almost lost. Promoters of Gung Ho had to think of new ways. Many of them gave up the struggle’ and went off to other jobs. Back in the earliest days of Gung Ho, training was started for just this eventuality. Schools called Bailie schools were set up at various points to train the junior co-operative membership in technical method and cooperative practice. They were as a rule, poorly financed and without machinery or adequate staff. Some were demolished in the Japanese advance at. the end of the war, others were bombed out of existence, but others survived, and these were brought together at Shuangshipu in South Shansi, to prepare a move to a new location in Sandan in West Kansu. Why Sandan in West Kansu? Why, that’s up in the panhandle of Kansu, Chinese Central Asia . . in an area once best noted for selling small girls and opium . . Now a semi-deserted country with a mellow old city falling into ruin, amongst which Gobi sands blow when fierce winds come after the long winter. A place nearly six thousand feet above the sea, 450 kilo west from Lanchow, on the old silk road leading to Turkestan. It was Sandan, then, because Sandan was well away from the path of the Japanese advance. Because it had ample raw material, wool, camel hair, coal, pottery-clay, iron, material for paper -making and other chemical industry. Because housing was easy to get and food cheap. Because it was near enough to the market centres of Kanchow and Liangchow without the bad effects that cities have on the training of village technicians. Because it had people very badly in need of everything small industry could bring. Because it was a promising’ new centre for a region well removed from the competation of the coast.

So the carts set out from Shuangshipu, horse carts in the blackest winter for seventy years, over the mountains and passes, with GeorgHogg walking along with them.

George, a young Englishman, a nephew of M_uriel Lester, had been with the movement since its inception. It was his last long march, for he was to die of tetanus the next summer in Sandan. I had been in Sandan with an advance party for some two months, preparing accommodation, and I passed over to George on his arrival. The road had had many adventures. Carts had slipped over icy tracks down precipices, boys had ridden on various trucks, two of which had blown up in a munitions explosion—there were many stories to be swapped as they sat on the heated beds in Randan. Slowly the bits of equipment began to come together. Slowly the place grew. Friends in America sent machinery and tools. The Women’s Cooperative Guild in England gave a cottage hospital and CORSO staffed it with Dr. and Mrs Spender. Training divisions began to spring up, to meet the needs of a rounded off selfcontained village. Our central buildings are those erected around a dagobo which is said to cover the hair of King Asoka of India. We feel at times that we are monks, as we look down at the worn bricks, worn bare by the pious feet of the priests of the ages. Certainly we try to, give our trainees that sense of mission, which will enable them to struggle with the incredible difficulties that lie in front of them in their efforts to bring better livelihood to the villages of China. To-day we have some 320 trainees, in twenty-seven training divisions, for their practical work, and in eight classes for their class work. Each trainee does his five hours class work, as well as four or more hours practical work a day. His week-ends and any other spare time are often taken up with buying material or with other aspects of his work. The two-week holiday at the end of each team is a holiday from classes, not practical work. Yet they keep up good spirits, and like boys most anywhere, love the swimming hole in summer and the skating in the winter—learning to work and play co-operatively, and to get results that way. We who work in Sandan feel that China is something more than a country. That it is a cause, standing for values the new one world needs. We know that the great burden of bringing back livelihood to the village must be carried out by people from the villages themselves. We feel it a privilege to be able to stand and work with the youth that faces such a struggle. We are grateful in turn to you in New Zealand who stand behind us at such a time as this. There is one thing more, it is good to be able to' say to you. It is that the future prosperity of our one World depends on several things. One of them is the form which the industrialisation of China will take. Gung Ho offers the small group, co-opera-tive system, which will enable industry to be integrated with the agricultural village and the pastoral steppe. In helping Gung Ho, we offer people of vision, realistic people of action, a way. To put it into common New Zealand terms, we offer them a horse on which to put their money.