The "70th Anniversary Celebration of the ICCIC" was held in the Meeting Hall of the Former Residence of Soong Ching Ling in Beijing on June 29.
ICCIC stands for the International Committee for the Promotion of Chinese Industrial Cooperatives or the Gung Ho International Committee.
Michael Crook, Vice-Chair of the ICCIC, delivered an opening speech at the ceremony. He welcomed all the distinguished guests and gave a brief historical retrospective of the organization. He said he looked forward to a new era of the ICCIC with a mission of furthering the establishment and development of cooperatives in China.
The attendees included Karen Carlson Loving, granddaughter of Lt. Col. Evans Carlson of the U.S. Marine Corps and some members of Carlson's Raiders. Carlson was a military attaché at the U.S. embassy in China in the late 1930s. He chose "Gung Ho" as the motto for his elite battalion. By late 1942, it was widely adopted throughout the Marine Corps as an expression of spirit and a "can do" attitude.
During the ceremony, all the guests joined a chorus in singing the National Anthem of the People's Republic of China, and guests from the United States sang the "The Marine Corps Hymn."
Also at the ceremony, Carlson's Raiders were presented with a silk banner for their dedication to spread the Gung Ho spirit and motto "Work Hard and Work Together."
Carl Worker, New Zealand's Ambassador to China; Isabel Crook, a consultant for the ICCIC; Tang Wensheng, Vice-chair of the China Soong Ching Ling Foundation; and Xie Yuan, Director of the Chinese People's Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries, attended the celebration ceremony.
Background: The History of the ICCIC
The Gung Ho movement was started in 1937 in Shanghai by Rewi Alley of New Zealand and some other foreigners together with a group of Chinese patriots. 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 (ICCIC) was founded in Hong Kong in January 1939. It is an international nongovernmental organization that aims to promote Chinese industrial cooperatives. Soong Ching Ling was elected as honorary chairperson. The work of the committee soon won support among the overseas Chinese and people worldwide.
It suspended its work in 1952 and revived it in 1987. Since that year, the ICCIC has supported a large number of cooperatives in different provinces in China for cooperative principle training, environment improvement and poverty alleviation.
The success of ICCIC's projects has strengthened its ties with other cooperative organizations at home and abroad.
Video: http://sclf.cri.cn/1/2009/07/03/2s1125.htm
