The International Committee for the Promotion of Chinese Industrial Cooperatives;

              The International Committee for the Promotion of
Chinese Industrial Cooperatives
The International Committee for the Promotion of Chinese Industrial Cooperatives
(Gung Ho International Committee, or ICCIC) is an international non-governmental
organization founded in 1939 in Hong Kong. It suspended its work in 1952 and revived
it in 1987.
What is Gung Ho?
Gung Ho is the abbreviated form of "Chinese industrial Cooperatives" in Chinese.
It can also mean "work together".
The Chinese industrial cooperative movement (Gung Ho) was initiated in 1937
soon after Japan's all-out invasion of China in Shanghai by a group of foreign friends
headed by Rewi Alley of New Zealand and then noted American journalists Edgar
Snow and Helen Foster Snow together with a group of Chinese patriots including Hu
Yuzhi, Sha Qianli and Zhang Naiqi. The movement aimed at organizing the
unemployed workers and refugees for production to support the War of Resistance.
From its beginning it gained the support of China's outstanding stateswoman Soong
Ching Ling (Mme. Sun Yat Sen), and of the Chinese Communist Party. In August 1938,
the Association of Chinese Industrial Cooperatives, a leading body of Gung Ho
movement, was set up in Wuhan, with Rewi Alley as the technical advisor directly
involved in the promotion of cooperatives. That autumn, the first Gung Ho cooperative
was set up in Baoji, Shaanxi Province. From then on, the movement spread quickly
throughout the whole of unoccupied China including the liberated areas led by the
Communist Party. According to incomplete statistics, 3,000 cooperatives were
functioning in the peak year 1941 with a total membership of some 30,000. Besides
articles of daily use by the people, Gung Ho produced a large number of army blankets
and uniforms for the soldiers at the front, and provided the guerrilla fighters in the
Communist base areas behind the Japanese line with weapons and ammunition, thus
effectively helping China's War of Resistance.
Historical Background of the Gung Ho International Committee
To win support from abroad, collect funds for development and ensure the proper
use of foreign aid, the International Committee for the Promotion of Chinese Industrial
Cooperatives was founded in Hong Kong in January 1939. Mme. Soong Ching Ling
was elected honorary chairman and the British Bishop of Hong Kong R. D. Hall, its
chairman. The work of the Committee soon won warm support from among overseas
Chinese and just-minded people world- wide who sympathized with the Chinese people
in fighting against the Japanese aggression. Organizations to aid Gung Ho were set up
in several countries notably the United States, Britain and the Philippines. Up to the end
of 1945, contributions in cash and materials totaling almost 10 million US dollars
poured in from the US, Britain, Canada, New Zealand, the Philippines, Singapore and
other countries. Technical experts from many countries volunteered to come and
work for Gung Ho.
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