page 7

Rewi Alley in New Zealand

"If China Succeeds Capital hasn't got a Snowball's Chance in Hell!"

Having lived and worked in China for nearly fifty years, Rewi Alley is the best person to make an objective assessment of the prospects for New Zealand—Chinese relations He said he hoped that increasing contacts with China would lead to a greater awareness among New Zealanders of what is going on in China.

Parochial New Zealanders

"People would know more, they need to know more. You only have to look at the parochial way people in New Zealand look at world politics. For example there is the New Zealand Rugby Union which says the Springbok Tour is not political. It's a highly political thing, leading to very drastic consequences".

"People have very little understanding of China's past, her culture, and her traditions. I think people in New Zealand could learn a lot by studying those things. China's is an old culture, a culture that has given so much to the world in scientific discovery, in the arts and so on; it has much to offer and I think our people should know something about it. I think the world of the future is not going to be a world of nationalism, rather it's going to be a world of working people's internationalism, on which I believe the future of mankind rests".

For several years Rewi Alley has been travelling around China among the ordinary people and writing about their experiences and struggles. He told us that the Chinese people were greatly interested in diplomatic, political and cultural contacts with other countries. They felt quite confident that visitors to China would see the way the Chinese social system was progressing and be attracted to the Chinese way of building socialism.

"I think of the remark of some American from Alaska, I think he was some politician, who came to China not long ago. He looked around China for a while and said: "If this thing succeeds capital hasn't got a chance of a snowball in hell!" Rewi Alley stressed that the Chinese had no intention of 'exporting revolution' themselves, although they would respect people, in New Zealand and elsewhere, who were trying to make revolution in their own countries.

Chinese 'Very Interested' in New Zealand

The Chinese Government and people, he said, were very interested in New Zealand and other Pacific countries, although there had been very few contacts in the past with the microstates like Fiji and Samoa. "The Chinese respect very much an independent country, they like to deal with independent countries on the basis of equality. New Zealand is potentially a leading country in the South Pacific. The Asian and Pacific area Oceania as the Chinese call it—is of great concern to China and they do want to have an Asia and Pacific which is free of the things that go to make war".

"When New Zealand recognised China I was in southeast Shansi, up in the old area which the people fought against Japanese Imperialism for so long in Taihangsan. Immediately the cardres around the commune in which I was staying rushed to the map to see where New Zealand was. "Oh, its down there is it, way down there". And they asked "well now, how many sheep do they have" and were very much interested. When I came back to Peking in early January the cadres I met said, "Australia has come along very well, they've established an embassy and they're having a reception for Australia Day for the first time. What about New Zealand, why are they holding behind?" That was the question that was in the ordinary man's mind. I don't know what's going on in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs here, though I expect they do have their difficulties".

Rewi Alley thinks that the future of New Zealand depended on its youth. He had been very pleased to meet the New Zealand student delegation while they were in China in 1971. "I was very surprised at their interest in political affairs and their recognition of what was going on in China".

'I Don't Think Much of Hashish'

"The young people in New Zealand are thinking more and the best of the young people are very much better than the best of the young people in the thirties, for instance. They know more, they understand more, they reach out more and they're more concerned with what's going on. There are a good many aberrations which we don't like. I don't think much of hashish because that's been tried in Central Asia for two thousand years and has produced nothing but inertia and dreaminess. But I think New Zealand youth, the up and coming youth, have a big future to play and I think their increasing interest in politics is a good thing. People get the kind of governments they deserve and that will go on".

We asked Rewi Alley about the role of young people in China and the situation with regard to the number of universities that had opened since the Cultural Revolution.

"Some universities didn't stop at all in various parts of China, but the big ones in Peking did stop and now they're going ahead again. First they tried bringing in worker and peasant people recommended by the communes and the army as the new students but now they're relying more on tests. You can't throw out the whole education system. You have to have tests of some kind to know if a person is able to catch on to higher learning, so examinations are now being used in schools although the final appraisal of a student doesn't go on his examinations. But the old ideas of pure memorisation and book knowledge only have had a very big knock back. In the schools and the universities there's an increasing appreciation of the fact that there's theory in everything, not just in politics but in everything you do. And theory and practise must run together in all branches of daily life and work.

We Live to Serve the People

"The main questions throughout the whole country are what we live for and why we live. The ideals of serving the mass of the people are still very strong all over the country and people believe that serving the people is the end of living. That is why they should struggle to pull China out of the chaos long centuries of mismanagement and corruption brought her to and put the country on the right road again, and I think this struggle is succeeding. Young people have a very big part to play in this struggle. The Young Communist League is going ahead very strongly now and youth organisations of one kind and another are playing their part in an organised way. China isn't an anarchist state or a nihilist state, and there is no possibility for individual freedom until you get the elementary freedoms that people must have and these freedoms have to be fought for in a collective, community way.