INDUSTRIAL HOPE FOR CHINA
By E. RALPH LAPWOOD
CAN industrial co-operatives, which played such a valiant part in the economic defence against Japan, contribute to China's achievement of unity and reconstruction? Having travelled widely over China as an inspector of the small self-governing factories set up by the C.I.C. (Chinese Industrial Co-operatives) movement in all kinds of environment, I believe that they can.
China's survival as a nation demands internal unity,—not unifica- tion by a dictating Party, but the attainment of a solution of national problems by constitutional methods, that is to say, unity achieved by democracy. But while village life has had certain democratic elements, the Chinese people has on the whole never received that training in democratic spirit and procedure which is essential if a nation is to become a real democracy. So every force which can work in China now as a schooling in democracy has most essential and opportune value. The industrial co-operative movement is such a force.
Three years ago, at Liuchow in Southern China, I attended a mass meeting of members of local industrial co-operatives. In an old temple yard, under the shadow of one of the strange cave-riddled pinnacles of limestone which characteris'e Kwangsi scenery, they were discussing the establishment of a Supply and Marketing De- partment of their Federation of Co-operatives. The people in the meeting were the skilled workers themselves. There were leather- goods makers who had escaped from Japanese-controlled Shanghai. There were skilled cotton-weavers from Hunan, both men and women. There were local leather-tanners who could shave a water- buffalo hide into four thin sheets, using no equipment but a sharp knife and a keen eye. There were carpenters who made the boats and coffins for which Liuchow is famous throughout China.
They had elected their own chairman and committee, and were now listening to the report of the committee on the proposed Supply and Marketing Department. When it was finished, questions began. From all parts of the meeting, from every co-operative society repre- sented, came comments and suggestions. The vitality of it was in startling contrast to all my memories of the miserable and lifeless factory-hands of Shanghai. In quick succession came fiery rhetoric from the excitable Hunanese, clever analysis from the Shanghai- landers, common-sense queries from the slower-spoken natives of Kwangsi. In the give-and-take of debate it was clear that, beneath the veneer of politeness which must surface every Chinese meeting, real problems were being brought out, discussed and solved in a new and thoroughly democratic way.
This meeting was typical of those going on all over China in co- operatives and their federations. (There are several hundred vigorous co-operatives, with tens of thousands of worker-members.) "A good co-operative can be recognised by its minute-book and accounts" is a motto of the movement. Again, the C.I.C., realising the need for leadership based on true (Rochdale) co-operative principles, has founded several Bailie Schools. These schools, named after a famous missionary pioneer of industrial education in China, train boys to become skilled members of the co-operatives. The best school is at Shan-tan in Kansu province, on the border of Turkestan. Under the direction of George Hogg, whose "death in July, 1945, deprived China of one of the very finest of its western educators, the boys of this school learned to manage all their own affairs. They were a motley collection of famine refugees, orphans, children of skilled workers from Honan and Shansi, and local peasant lads. But in dormitory life, school discipline, singing (local folksongs and new co-operative songs), current event discussion groups, labour gangs, games, running of two model factories, they learned to organise and govern themselves.
In this way they grew rapidly into maturity and responsibility. So when their criginal school at Shuangshifoo in Shensi was threatened by Japanese advance they rose to the crisis. They up- rooted everything—instruments, furniture, personal belongings, machine-shop, wool-spinning plant, cotton-spinning set. They loaded some of it on to lorries, but most on to carts which they drove or pulled themselves. Thus they trekked a thousand kilometres north- westward to Shan-tan, there to re-erect everything in derelict Buddhist temples, which they repaired and adapted for the use of their school. This spirit of mutual confidence and common re- sponsibility is the very life-breath of democracy. The characters steeped in it in the Bailie Schools will provide the future leadership of the industrial co-operatives.
Agricultural and credit co-operatives exist in both Kuomintang- controlled and Communist-controlled China. Both parties are agreed as to their value. Chinese industrial co-operatives also exist on both sides of the boundary. Before the split between the parties, the C.I.C. had set up depots in Yenan and other ptaces which were later cut off by inter-party struggles. Thus both by virtue of co- operative principles and by organisational linkage the C.I.C., given any opportunity, can become a force and field for unity and common endeavour in China. Dr. Lowdermilk, an American authority on soil erosion and rural problems, described the industrial co-operative movement as the greatest hope for the salvation of Chinese rural economy.
Pre-war industrialisation in China was forcing down the standard of life of the peasants by driving out the ancient hand industries which had supplemented the family earnings. Beggared farmers, with their wives and children, formed a huge reservoir of cheap labour—and cheap life—with which to run the squalid factories of the port cities. This process will continue in post-war years, unless new factors come in to save the situation. The C.I.C. is one new factor. During war years, meeting the intense need for consumer goods consequent on the loss of the manufacturing cities of the east, it organised industry on a new basis. Using local raw materials, employing local or refugee skilled labour, and selling in the local market, the C.I.C. started at the point where village industry had stood before the advent of mass-produced goods. But it did not stop there. Co-operatives gave strength through union to individual craftsmen. Federation gave business and financial strength to indi- vidual co-operatives. The C.I.C. promoters brought expert advice on management, marketing, financing and accounting, and improve- ment in manufacturing technique and standards.
Consider for instance the little town of Nan-hsiung in northern Kuangtung. It stands on a navigable river which flows down to Canton, in a fertile plain fringed by forested mountains. In the mountains lie coal and limestone, and on them grows bamboo in pronsion. In the Nan-hsiung district I saw a saltpetre co-operative manufacturing explosives for the lime-burning co-operatives. These quarried and burned limestone, to supply in their turn the lime needed in papermaking. The papermakers' co-operatives cut bamboo, rotted it in vats with lime, pounded the fibre to pulp, and made paper by the ancient handsieving process. They sold their paper to the local co-operatives making Chinese-type (paper) umbrellas, to newspapers, and to printing co-operatives near and far. The co- operatives all belonged to the Nan-hsiung Federation, which arranged supply and marketing on their behalf, and guaranteed them for loans from the banks. Thus a cycle of co-operative industry competed with and began to replace the dying system of unconnected merchant- controlled and merchant-exploited peasant handicraft.
More than that, C.I.C. paper technicians gave expert advice on the treatment of bamboo, introduced simple waterwheels to utilise mountain streams for pounding pulp, showed how to add kaolin to improve colour and surface, made calenders and rollers, so that the quality of the paper increased steadily, while its cost rose little. Sheets of paper made in the unchanged ancient way are the wrong size for modern use—too small for a double page of a newspaper, too big for a single page. So C.I.C. organisers persuaded workers to standardise the size to that of a normal double page. The old way of marketing was to put only 96 sheets into the nominal "Hun- dred," and to include as many imperfect sheets as could pass un- detected. C.I.C. co-operatives set their " Hundred " as too perfect sheets, increasing their business and challenging the accepted standard of commercial morality.
. China's vast Northwest is full of wool—yet in many parts the people go half-naked in skins through the freezing winter, because they do not know how to spin and weave. Under the leadership of Mr. Lu Kuang-mien, who is now visiting England, the C.I.C. intro- duced a simple spinning-wheel and handloom into the Northwest in 1939, and has trained hundreds of thousands of women, otherwise idle, to spin, and put into action thousands of looms. The C.I.C. provided over three million blankets for the Chinese army from dis- tricts in west and northwest China which would otherwise have sold their raw wool across the lines to Japanese agents. Having introduced the wool textile industry, C.I.C. technicians worked hard to improve it, with such good results that by now their best tweeds and blankets compare favourably with imported materials.
In China, even with the greatest speed of development of com- munications, it will be many years before the country is adequately covered by facilities for transport. Even then distances are so great that local industry catering for the needs of the local people, and improved as the C.I.C. is improving it, will be able to hold its own with imported goods. This will mean that the partially indus- trialised countryside will be able to provide better living for all its people, under infinitely better working conditions for those engaged in industrial production than were ever offered by the slums of Shanghai, Hankow and Tientsin.
The industrial co-operatives organised in the C.I.C. movement have shown their stamina and vitality through seven years of harsh trial, even while China's industry ground slowly to near standstill under the pressure of blockade and inflation. Profiting by the ex- perience and prestige gained during years of bitter struggle, they can become one of the most valuable factors in constructing the China of the future.
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