Our Seven–Their Five: A Fragment from the Story of Gung Ho is a fictional work by Rewi Alley, the technical director of the Chinese Industrial Cooperatives during the Second Sino-Japanese War. Alley wrote this story in 1943, while living in a village in the Qinling Mountains of Shaanxi Province. He had recently returned from Hunan, where he observed famine conditions and the devastating effects of the Japanese advance. Drawing on these experiences, he produced a vivid portrait of ordinary life in wartime China. However, the book was not published until 1963, well after the Communist victory, at a time when Chiang Kai-shek was portrayed as a central antagonist of the people’s struggle. Reflecting that political context, Alley depicts the Nationalist regime as obstructing the cooperative movement, a view consistent with 1960s ideological narratives.

Our Seven–Their Five is not centered on one protagonist. Instead, the story follows a group of refugees from Hunan Province who flee famine and war to settle in a small town. There, they meet Fu, a cooperative organizer educated in Beijing, who helps them form a cooperative enterprise. According to the cooperative rules, at least seven people were needed to register a group, but the refugees were only five. They therefore joined forces with seven weavers to reach the required number—hence the title, “Our Seven–Their Five.” With support from the Cooperative Federation, providing loans and organizational guidance, they managed to launch a small but successful operation. Through teamwork and persistence, the refugees began to rebuild their lives.

The story stands out because it offers a rare ground-level view of wartime China. Rather than focusing on generals, political leaders, or major battles, Alley documents the daily realities of refugees, laborers, and peasants whose survival depended on cooperation. In his depiction, life and death coexist with unsettling normalcy: people die, yet work continues; tragedy is woven into the fabric of everyday endurance.

There is even humor. In one memorable scene, a foreign inspector visits a cooperative (clearly Alley himself), and local children gossip about how strange the foreigner looks, especially his long nose, which they imagine could dip right into his teacup. Moments like this humanize the story and reflect Alley’s lighthearted way of addressing cultural encounters.

Equally important is his refusal to reduce Chinese society to a simple Communist vs. Nationalist binary. Instead, Alley portrays a complex human landscape shaped by hardship, survival, and moral ambiguity. He writes with empathy for the refugees and displaced people, emphasizing their struggles to adapt to rural life amid famine, disease, and Japanese occupation.

The story also captures the class tensions and corruption that persisted even within the cooperative system. In one episode, we see a local landlord sponsoring a cooperative not out of solidarity but to gain easy access to credit and manipulate grain prices during a period of hyperinflation. Such moments reveal how some cooperatives, especially in Nationalist-controlled areas, were exploited as quasi-private enterprises rather than genuine collectives.

By highlighting these abuses, Alley underscores that the cooperative movement was not uniformly idealistic or successful. Some cooperatives functioned as large factories; others resembled small capitalist ventures; and still others truly fulfilled their mission of mutual aid and community resilience. Amid this uneven landscape, Alley still finds hope in the cooperative spirit and endurance of ordinary Chinese people. 

The Early C.I.C. (Indusco) Movement originally developed in China during the late 1930s. These graphs, made from data collected from regional reports and estimates from annual conferences in Chongqing, help us visualize the scale and scope of the C.I.C. movement over the decade that followed.

The above two graphs depict the rise of Indusco cooperatives following their inception in 1938. We can observe a steady rise in both co-opted factories, as well as members working within them, which peaks at just under 30,000 workers operating nearly 1,900 co-opted factories across China. Following the Summer of 1941, we see a sharp decline in members working for C.I.C. factories and a decline in cooperative factories as well.

The third graph shows the monthly production value for all C.I.C.s from December 1938 to February 1945. This graph attempts to adjust for the unprecedented inflation China faced during WWII, which means all values are pegged to the 1937 value of China’s currency. This graph mirrors the story in the two graphs above, which detail a rise to late 1941, followed by a decline.

This is largely due to increased suspicion by the Nationalist Government that the C.I.C. movement held communist sentiment. This led to threats, arrests, and even some executions of C.I.C. workers and officials, often without evidence or formal charges levied against them. This, of course, led many more officials and workers to consider resigning, while the rest remained under increased police supervision. Adding to that were the incredible amounts of inflation, which diminished the value of loans and donations the C.I.C. received.

This table breaks down our total co-op number from June 1942 by industry and the seven regions within which they operated at the time. We can see that the most productive regions were located largely in the west, with the exception of the Southeast region, which was made up of the Kiangsi, Kwangtung, and Fukien provinces. This chart also allows us to see the specialization of some regions, such as the southeast, which held half of all chemical cooperative factories, or the northwest region, which had roughly two-thirds of all mining facilities.

*Some numbers are estimated due to the instability of the exchange rate during this time.

This Graph shows who and from where Indusco was funded. The largest percentage, over 23 million, from banks and private loans, were loans from Chinese banks, largely the Bank of China, which gave 18 million. The second largest, government appropriations, gave just over 11 million. Making up around 3% are funds from individuals, committees, and groups from places like China, the Philippines, Hawaii, Burma, Java, India, Siam, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, England, and the US. At around 2% are “Special Funds”, from notable places such as 50 thousand from Madame Chiang Kai-shek and 6 thousand from Soong Ailing, wife of H.H. Kung, as well as 150 thousand from the American Advisory Committee for Civilian Relief in China, headed by Eleanor Roosevelt. Lastly, there is the paid-up share capital from members, which totals just under 400 thousand.

*No data available for 1945.

The United China Relief Fund was a cooperative association that provided aid to China and its people, beginning during the Second World War in 1941 and continuing until 1949. The above graph shows the receipts, or money donated, to the United China Relief Fund and disbursements, or money used by the fund. These disbursements were used for all types of aid to Chinese citizens, such as medical and public health projects, child welfare, education, reconstruction, disaster relief, and rehabilitation.