The suspended ICCIC organization found new legs and slowly revived when reform and opening-up was initiated late in the 1970s. Eventually, plots of land were contracted out to individual households for families to manage. By 1987, a reorganized Gung Ho International Committee was set up in Beijing – as a non-profit organization – with an older Rewi Alley assuming the role of chair, and a 100-strong membership representing 10 countries. The new ICCIC benefited from experts on cooperative economies and leadership models, plus devotees of Gung Ho! from all walks of life. Isabel Crook, daughter of missionaries, an 'old China hand', and a founder of Beijing Foreign Studies University, recruited her own son Michael and then-youthful Zhang Xiaoshan, a worker-peasant-soldier-student returned from an eye-opening stint in Mongolia during the "cultural revolution." The two young men eventually shared the leadership – in the tradition of Gung Ho – as foreign and Chinese chairs respectively, from 1999 to 2005. By then, Zhang Xiaoshan had become a respected member of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) and Michael Crook was a nearly-retired member of the founding group of an international school, the Western Academy of Beijing. Today, the chair is shared between Michael and Dr. Yuan Peng, a researcher at CASS Rural Development Institute. They continue to implement, under Secretary General Du Yingtang and with the help of its rising young leaders of tomorrow, preparations for Gung Ho's future work, which is unapologetically socialist in nature.

The first image that leaps to mind about today's cooperatives likely falls short of Gung Ho's real accomplishments; cooperatives are not confined to crop growing on pooled land, but leverage people power of all stripes. The outfit that shows people how to use the power of togetherness has been busy for much of the last 70 years conducting training and support for self-organizing economic units of ordinary producers – since its revival, hundreds of projects have been planned by people who seek to manage their own work and the marketing of their products. Laid off women workers in Shanghai are finding new strength and hope in economic interdependence. Manifestations of non-agricultural cooperatives include those pooling cottage industry skills, making and marketing traditional stuffed cloth toys, or operating spinning cooperatives. Still others manage chicken farms. But where disaster strikes, people are returning to the land for sustenance.

In earthquake ravaged Sichuan, some people who used to depend on tourism no longer can; there is nowhere for tourists to stay, perhaps no roads to get them there, and certainly no money to rebuild facilities immediately. Gung Ho has helped locals from Pengzhou, for example, start the Danjing Tea Cooperative for Huangcun Village while they endure the long process of regaining sufficient economic health to rebuild hotels and roads. Further south they have assisted orange growers form the Qinjian Fruit Cooperative in Renshou County. Interesting hybrids are cooperatives that both sell agricultural products like peaches but also host tourists in bed-and-breakfast style accommodations. Many cooperative crops are organically grown and there is increasing demand for them. The township of Mengyang between Chengdu and Pengzhou is planning a huge market area for cooperative-produced goods, and asked Gung Ho! to consult to them and their prospective suppliers.

The Future: Social Democracy

The year 2012 has been designated the Year of Cooperatives by the United Nations. ICCIC is one of 26 organizations currently being considered for an award of RMB 100,000 from the Beijing Municipal Agricultural Commission, and is also vying for the role of China partner and agent for the NGO Society for Ecology and Environment. But it is not all about funding and formal partnerships: they share information with, and send delegations to, cooperative associations in Japan and Canada; the former has made inroads with social cooperatives that do things like ensure the care of the elderly. Keeping the Gung Ho spirit in ICCIC means keeping it flowing with young blood and new ideas. This September is when their five-year renewal of the Board rolls round.