Rewi Alley: Chinese Revolutionary

Rewi Alley, a quiet bloke from Canterbury, a dabbler in poetry, a farmer, fireman and soldier went "to go and have a look at China" and ended up becoming the architect of one of the world's greatest labour movements.

In her book A Communist in the Family: Searching for Rewi Alley, Rewi's cousin Elspeth Sandys presents a layered biography of the Kiwi who became a Chinese hero and "the great friend of the people of China". New Zealand has Special Nation Status in China entirely because of Rewi Alley and his work.

In conversation with New Zealand Herald investigative reporter Matt Nippert, Sandys recounts her 2017 visit to China to trace her cousin’s life there. On that visit, she was told there were more statues of Rewi than Mao Zedong. While she thought it an exaggeration, it certainly seemed possible in China’s North West.

Intrigued by what he had read about China, Alley left New Zealand in December 1926 to see the Chinese revolution up close. He would stay for 60 years, becoming one of China's best-known and best-loved foreigners.

In his first decade there, he worked variously as a fire officer, factory inspector and relief worker, labouring among the Chinese and trying to improve their living and working conditions.

He came to greater prominence during the Japanese invasion of China in 1937, after he was involved in efforts to found the Association of Chinese Industrial Cooperatives (INDUSCO), commonly known by the slogan Alley coined, ‘Gung Ho/Work Together'. Gung Ho aimed to organise small-scale self-supporting cooperatives which created employment for workers, while continuing production to support resistance against the Japanese.

In the following decades he worked tirelessly to elevate the lot of the working people of China. Before and after his death in 1987, both the New Zealand and Chinese governments honoured Alley for his work in China and have continued to do so in recent decades, with commemorative events in 1997 and 2007.