Rewi Alley - After The Communist Victory

After The Communist Victory

Following the Communist victory over the Nationalists in 1949 Alley was urged to remain in China and work for the Communist Party of China. He produced many works praising the Party and the government of the People's Republic of China, including Yo Banfa!, Man Against Flood and China's Hinterland in the Great Leap Forward. Some of his published works have historic interest. Although imprisoned and "struggled with" during the Cultural Revolution, Alley remained committed to communism and bore no grudges.

In 1973 New Zealand civil servant Gerald Hensley and the new New Zealand Ambassador to China, Bryce Harland, called on Alley. He was in his seventies, a bald, pink-faced man with bright blue eyes, and an inexhaustible flow of conversation. We sat and talked for most of an afternoon, with Rewi occasionally jumping up to fetch a book or check a point. He had, he said, lost the best of two libraries, once to the Japanese and again to the Red Guards, who had thrown out his collections and torn up his pictures in front of him. He was still bitter over their behaviour. He was living in the old Italian Legation which had been converted into flats for the leading foreign friends, which were allocated on the bleak basis of seniority. On the death of the previous occupant Anna Louise Strong, Rewi moved downstairs into the best front apartment and everyone else moved on one place.

Unlike most of the friends of the Communist Party of China who remained in Beijing, Alley had little trouble travelling around the world, usually lecturing on the need for nuclear disarmament. The New Zealand government did not strip Alley of his passport and remained proud of his ties to important Party leaders. In the 1950s he was offered a knighthood but turned the honour down.

His house in Beijing is now the offices of the Chinese People's Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries.