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Otago Daily Times, Issue 24410, 23 September 1940, Page 11

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CHINESE INDUSTRY CHRISTCHURCH MAN'S PART The leading part being taken by a former Christchurch man, Mr Rewi Alley, in the organisation and direction of the great industrial co-operative movement in Western China has been the subject of tributes in several recent books and other publications on China. The co-operative movement was formed among Chinese who migrated to the west as a result of Japanese aggression, and now provides employment and goods for hundreds of thousands in this formerly undeveloped area.

Mr Rewi Alley is a brother of Mr G. T. Alley, a former All Black, and now officer in charge of the New Zealand Country Library Service. He served in the Great War, and on returning to New Zealand took up sheepfarming for a time. Seventeen years ago he went to China, and eventually was appointed to an important position in the industrial section of the Shanghai Municipal Council. A highlypaid official, he gave up this work over two years ago to help to launch the co-operative movement, being content to accept the meagre salary of 200 Chinese dollars a month as technical adviser. .',.,„ ;■ •, Mr Alley has given himself entirely to the work of the movement, according to people who have visited him during the past year or so. To gain the confidence of those whom he wishes to influence and help and to understand and appreciate their problems and outlook, he lives as a Chinese. He dresses in coarse Chinese clothing, eats Chinese food, and has a purely Chinese home. A visitor who wished to see him in Chungking recently found him not in the stores or offices of the co-operative movement, but in upstairs rooms of a Chinese back-street tenement. In her recent book, " China at War. Freda Utley devoted several pages to describing the work which Mr Alley is carrying out for the movement. He is, she said, "one of those patient, persistent, even-tempered men whom the greatest difficulties cannot discourage, and who, because they so firmly believe that their aims can be achieved, are able to surmount one obstacle after another."