Rewi Alley
Harland was a highly regarded strategic thinker, who rose quickly through the ranks in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In 1973, Harland was appointed New Zealand's first Ambassador to China, where he was responsible for opening up diplomatic relations with that country. Harland has written of the period that until then, New Zealand's best-known connection with China was Rewi Alley. Harland worked alongside other Western diplomats, including then-US representative in Peking, George H.W. Bush, who described Harland as very pushy to extract as much information as the United States had on China at that time, despite liking him personally.