The U.S. table tennis team began a weeklong trip to China at the invitation of the country’s government on this day in 1971, breaking through the Cold War tensions between the two nations in what has since been called “ping-pong diplomacy.” The U.S. and China had no formal relationship at that point, after the U.S. cut ties following the Chinese Civil War. The relationship remained tense, including fighting on opposite sides of the Korean War and China’s support for the North Vietnamese during the Vietnam War.
By the late 1960s, China was looking for a way to create more space between it and the Soviet Union because of their growing ideological and geopolitical differences. At the 1971 World Table Tennis Championship in Japan, an opportunity presented itself when U.S. player Glenn Cowan slept in and missed his team's bus to the tournament. He managed to get onto the next bus to the stadium, which happened to be the one occupied by China's men's team.
While he was received hesitantly by the players, Chinese team captain Zhuang Zedong approached him and shook his hand, sharing a silk-screen print of a mountain landscape with Cowan. The next day, the American player gave Zedong a t-shirt with a peace symbol in red, white, and blue. A couple of days later, the U.S. team was officially invited to visit China.
The team became the first official American delegation to visit Beijing since ties had been cut off decades earlier. It spent 10 days visiting sites across the country, including playing exhibition matches and attending banquets. While the visit was going on, the U.S. worked to add some diplomatic heft to the cultural exchange by loosening currency controls on the country and making it easier for people to visit the U.S. from China. The athletic exchange had cracked the Cold War ice; less than a year later, President Richard Nixon would himself visit China for diplomatic talks.
You can read more about the visit and see photos of the event and some items brought back from the visit on the website of the National Museum of American Diplomacy.
