Carrying forward Rewi Alley’s spirits with action——An interview of Dave Bromwich,the winner of the 2019 Chinese Government Friendship Award

By Liu Guozhong

Rewi Alley is a New Zealander. He spent 60 years in China, from 1927 to his death in 1987. He intended to come to China to “just have a look,” but he decided to stay a year later. In 1937, Japan invaded China, and thousands of workers became refugees. To help the refugees and Anti-Japanese war effort in China, Rewi, Edgar Snow, and others initiated the Chinese Industrial Cooperatives movement. In 1938 the Chinese Industrial Cooperative Association was officially established, and Rewi was appointed as Technical consultant. From 1938 to 1942, he traveled around China to promote industrial cooperatives. After the Kuomintang government dismissed him, he still worked as field secretary of the International Committee to promote Chinese Industrial Cooperatives (ICCIC).

From 1942, apart from cooperatives work, he paid more attention to cooperative technicians’ training by establishing the Bailie Technical School. From 1945 to 1953, as the headmaster of the Shandan Bailie Technical School, he put his philosophy of creative education into practice. “Hand and Mind together, Create and Analysis” was the school’s everyday education motto. After the founding of the People’s Republic of China, from 1953 to 1987, he lived in Beijing. During these years, he attended peace conferences, traveled around China and abroad to promote peace, wrote of the development of China and encouraged people to people friendship between China and western countries, and did translations promoting Chinese culture. In 1952, under his suggestion, the New Zealand China Friendship Society (NZCFS) was set up to encourage a friendly relationship between New Zealanders and the Chinese.

Dave Bromwich was born and brought up in a small farming district in Northland, New Zealand. As a child of English parents in a NZ rural community, he experienced a mild form of racism. Perhaps this gave him an appreciation of the need to support people for who they are and welcome differences.

Dave’s political awareness further developed at university. It was the time of the American War in Vietnam, which many students vehemently opposed. He moved toward an appreciation of perspectives beyond a narrow western outlook and a concern for the underprivileged. He became involved in setting up and running a student cooperative for the purchase of fruit and vegetables as part of his University life.

After graduation from university, he had a brief career in Wellington. Then, in 1976, he set off for overseas travel with his wife. Based in England, they spent two years working and traveling in Europe, then spent ten months traveling overland back to New Zealand, apart from the final flight from Indonesia to New Zealand. This travel period was very formative, exposing him to a diverse range of societies and cultures, an appreciation that has never left him. In some of the more remote and impoverished areas traveled the harsh environment showed him strength in the people who lived there that was not evident in western city dwellers.

Back in New Zealand, at the age of 27, he purchased a small orchard and ran the orchard as a successful smallholding, enabled by membership in a large cooperative that exported apples to 60 countries. During this time, he began to study the Chinese language and culture, and then Development Studies.

Dave joined NZCFS in 1990, and in 1991, he and his family traveled independently around China for two months for the first time. Then again, in 1995, he and his wife came to China to teach English in Lianyungang, Jiangsu, as the first envoy of the newly established sister city relationship between Napier and Lianyungang. His daughter was the first western child to attend the local primary school in that city.From 2000 on, Dave became more active in NZCFS activities and began his main adventure with China. He had become vice-president of the New Zealand China Friendship Society and interested in the life and work of Rewi Alley. As an executive member of the NZCFS, he was responsible for the relationship between Shandan Bailie school and the NZCFS. From 2013 on, Dave became the President of NZCFS and spent more time and energy developing the friendship between New Zealand and China through various activities. In 2019, Dave was presented with a Chinese Government Friendship Award.

Liu Guozhong: As a New Zealander, how do you know about Rewi Alley?

Dave Bromwich:As a New Zealander, I was vaguely aware of Rewi Alley, and this knowledge was extended as a member of NZCFS. During my initial travels in China, when in Yunnan, Lijiang, I met an elderly member of the Naxi Performing Group in the old town’s cobbled streets. At that time, few foreigners were traveling in the more remote areas of China, and recognizing us (including my seven-year-old daughter) asked where we were from. On replying “New Zealand,” he immediately said that he had met Rewi Alley. Later on, while visiting the Banpo Neolithic Village near Xi’an in Shaanxi Province, I was amazed to read several comments from Rewi Alley, describing the significance of the artifacts featured in the Museum. It made me wonder deeply who this New Zealander was with such a presence in China? In 2000, after attending an event in Beijing, I asked to be taken to Rewi’s old dwelling in the Youxie compound in Taijichang, where I was given a copy of Rewi’s autobiography, which I primarily read on the plane trip back to New Zealand. On my arrival in New Zealand, I learned that I had been nominated to be NZCFS vice-president. It was meant to be, and I became increasingly associated with Rewi’s legacy in China from this point on. Although I never met Rewi, he has played a significant part in my life ever since.

Liu Guozhong: How do you see Rewi’s legacy today?

Dave Bromwich:I believe that the legacy of Rewi covers three key areas: the cooperative movement (Gong He and ICCIC) , Bailie education (now expressed at Shandan Bailie School, Lanzhou City University, and Beijing Bailie University) , and International Peace, which includes promoting mutual understanding and people to people friendship, as promoted in NZCFS.

Chinese society and international relations had changed considerably since Rewi’s day when he initiated and worked in these three areas. In that respect, the legacies need to move forward with the times.

Bailie’s education philosophy continues to offer value in teaching the broad range of technological and social outcomes needed for modern China. It is a proven teaching methodology to incorporate in today’s classrooms, but its actual practice has waned somewhat.

The promotion of cooperatives as a community and economic development tool is also of great value, especially for more remote communities. As a business in which the shareholders are the cooperative members, it assists production, from agriculture to handcraft work, to engage in a broad market. Cooperatives can also increase community harmony through the collaborative approach. In recent years, the Chinese government has placed more importance on cooperatives in development.

When NZCFS was established in 1952, international relationships were in a state of severe cold war mentality. The concept of communism was dreaded and promoted with fear and as a threat to Western countries. The need to establish relationships at a person-to-person level was seen as a way to promote understanding and remove fear.

Today we are in a new era of competition between East and West. Having entered the global community following Deng Xiaoping’s opening up, there was a naive expectation that China would naturally adopt western systems of society and governance. Instead, the failure to recognize 5000 years of civilization and appreciate that China has her proven approaches is now at the center of a new cold war, as the West declines and China rises. So the need for mutual understanding and respect is as critical as ever to move towards collaboration and harmony. Pandemics and global warming are current severe issues that need global solutions, and this demands a new era of international consensus.

Liu Guozhong: Please tell us more about your involvement in poverty reduction, rural and cooperative development work in China. Any lessons learned from your experience?

Dave Bromwich:Firstly, I led a three-year project working with the Guangxi Institute of Botany on their Karst Environmental Rehabilitation Project. With several New Zealand colleagues, we were able to bring some new technologies and approaches to enhance the project’s economic development. I then joined a Massey University team in an “Improve Growth Rates of Young Animals” project, with a critical role in enhancing the transfer of technology identified by the experts to the community.

Dave Bromwich，New Zealand

I then began working with colleagues in Gansu at Shandan. Here the legacy of Rewi Alley provided a foundation for the rural community and economic development and gave direction as to how to proceed. I was privileged to become part of Gong He, first as an executive member of the committee, then as a vice-Chair, and started working with the secretariat, with a series of projects to help townships in Shandan county Zhangye district to develop cooperatives. This soon extended to working with Shaanxi provincial women’s federation and agriculture department. We also implemented several small community rehabilitation projects after the Wenchuan earthquake of 2008. Mostly these projects were funded through NZCFS and NZ government development funds. In 2006-13, we developed and implemented the following cooperative projects in Gansu and Shaanxi. From then to the present, we have continued some extension of this work in four provinces.

This was a very satisfying period of my life, and I also consider it an essential aspect of understanding what was happening in China and how the policies of the Chinese government were working effectively towards freedom from poverty. Our projects worked within these goals but perhaps added some value in the small regions where we worked.

The opportunity to work with local government personnel, technicians, and notably the smallholder farmers and households has given me an appreciation of what Rewi Alley has expressed about the strength of the Chinese people and community. It was a very comfortable and rewarding social environment to have had the privilege of joining.

Liu Guozhong: You have visited and created a good understanding of the Bailie schools in China. From your point of view, how to further develop Bailie education in the new era?

Dave Bromwich:In all areas of vocational training, the approach of half classroom /half practical learning has been proven to give very successful learning outcomes, and it would be of great value to extend this approach more widely. An example at the newly established Bailie Vocational College in Shandan would incorporate this approach in their courses in rural development.

For example, a new project initiative promotes agriculture technologies with sustainable energy and water conservation while improving rural community economic development. Titled Comprehensive Development Mode of New Energy and Ecological Agriculture in North-west China would ideally be situated at Shandan as a research and development site and downstream extension. Technology training would include engineering and construction, electrical technologies using solar power and heat pumps, plumbing, and scientific agricultural technologies. These would all be enhanced through learning while doing. An extension of this approach may be for training to happen on-site as this project replicates in different sites across the Northwest.

I compare this opportunity to Rewi Alley’s training of technicians for the oil fields in the 1950s.

I would also like to see the cooperative training programs delivered through the earlier projects established as online courses, allowing a broader extension of collaborative promotion to more trainees to enhance the management of cooperatives. Practical hands-on assignments using trainees’ experiences in their work in cooperatives would be a stylish way to incorporate “learning while doing, creating, and analyze.”

Liu Guozhong: As the president of the NZCFS, what kind of approach have you taken in promoting personto-person friendship between New Zealand and China?

Dave Bromwich:Most of the approaches relate to precisely this, promoting people-to-people exchanges, as we believe that the best way is through direct engagement. These have been delivered through a range of different projects.

Firstly, we have emphasized youth, and through our branches, several exchanges and youth delegations have been implemented. These include: Establishing school exchanges with two-way student trips, and establishment of online contact; Culture exchanges, for example, youth choirs and orchestras, bringing youth cultural groups to New Zealand; A Youth Ambassador scheme, followed by a Young Professional Delegation program to exchange ideas between young professionals in both countries.

Secondly, NZCFS has delivered educational tours to China for many years, with the motto “We know China best.” These tours have visited key scenic and historical sites in China and, wherever possible, had a genuine engagement with some of our partnerships in China. These have included visiting some of our project cooperatives, meeting their community members, meeting the Women’s Federation, looking at their work, and exchanging ideas.

Thirdly, Through our New Zealand nurse heroine Kathleen Hall, or He Mingqing in Chinese, we have established a scholarship for young women from poor rural communities to attend tertiary nursing. From the first graduate in Guangxi in 2006 to the present, we have retained contact, learned about their lives and how they work in the local community.

In New Zealand, our branches have ongoing meetings that present aspects of Chinese culture and feature speakers with experience of China. We also respond to interview opportunities and write letters to the media. It is the branches that have been at the heart of the exchanges. NZCFS has been very fortunate to have received strong support for these projects, in the Rewi Alley Friendship Exchange fund established for five years at the 60th anniversary of NZCFS and the Simon Deng Li Fund several years by NZCFS honorary lifelong patron, Deng Li.

Liu Guozhong: Other things you would like to share related to your work or interests in China.

Dave Bromwich:Being a westerner, the constant shaming of China is very distressing. While no country is perfect, China has been seriously misrepresented and unjustly criticized. The propaganda that comes from the west has two routes.

The most obvious is a failure of the west to understand what China is and has to offer. Secondly, fear of China becoming an equal on the global stage, leading to a deliberate attempt to denigrate China to keep it down. Finally, it is detrimental that western governments take an adversarial approach to competition to the extent that conflict is escalating, rather than openness and maturity to collaborate for global harmony.

Whichever reason, there is a failure to recognize that China, as she develops into a significant global power, will not become like the west. But the outcome is that the western public is misled about China and her people and does not accept the positive contribution China has to make.

My concern lies in this misrepresentation of China and the difficulty in having China contribute her values of harmony and peace to a world suffering from the current direction being taken. The global economy is under threat, unilateralism is increasing, global health is very insecure, global warming is having an adverse effect everywhere, and the danger of war is rising. The conflict approach rather than collaboration is diminishing the whole world’s opportunity for sustainable development and alleviation of poverty worldwide.

Recently, I have been presenting on the topic “Understanding Chinese culture: the Challenge to the West.” I attempt to demonstrate an understanding from a Chinese perspective on topical issues. The key here is to let China have a voice rather than looking at China’s Western interpretations. My learning has come from my engagement with China and the people I have met and worked with. Thank you, Rewi Alley, for giving me this opportunity!