Blogging from Shanghai, part 8

Ping Pong Diplomacy. One of the first public hints of improvedU.S.-China relations came on April 6, 1971, when the American Ping-Pongteam, in Japan for the 31st World Table Tennis Championship, received asurprise invitation from their Chinese colleagues for an all-expensepaid visit to the People’s Republic. Time magazine called it “The pingheard round the world.” On April 10, nine players, four officials, andtwo spouses stepped across a bridge from Hong Kong to the Chinesemainland, ushering in an era of “Ping-Pong diplomacy.” They were thefirst group of Americans allowed into China since the Communisttakeover in 1949.

From April 11th to 17th , adelighted American public followed the daily progress of the visit innewspapers and on television, as the Americans played–and lost–exhibition matches with their hosts, toured the Great Wall and SummerPalace, chatted with Chinese students and factory workers, and attendedthe Canton Ballet.

Premier Chou En-lai worked the public relations opportunitybeautifully, receiving the Americans at a banquet in the Great Hall ofthe People on April 14. “You have opened a new chapter in the relationsof the American and Chinese people,” he told the unlikely diplomats. “Iam confident that this beginning again of our friendship will certainlymeet with majority support of our two peoples.” He also extended aninvitation for more American journalists to visit China, provided theydo not “all come at one time.” That same day, the U.S. announced plansto remove a 20-year embargo on trade with China. A Chinese table tennisteam reciprocated by visiting the United States.

Ping-Pong was “an apt metaphor for the relations between Washingtonand Peking” noted a Time reporter, as each nation signaled, in turn,its openness to change. Despite the public warming trend, Nixon andKissinger decided to keep their back-channel negotiations with China tothemselves. It was not until July 15, after Kissinger’s secret missionto Beijing, that Nixon announced that he, too, would make the journeythe following year, as the first American president to visit China.

Since that time, exchange programs between China and the UnitedStates have proliferated, and each year thousands of Chinese from thePeople’s Republic of China immigrate to the United States.

And of course, the Chinese still play ping pong. In fact, todayafter lunch, I was invited to join a group from the InternationalExchange Center of the East China University of Political Science &Law to play. Like the Americans in 1971, when my turn came, I lost.

bh