“Ping-Pong diplomacy led to U.S. President Richard Nixon’s visit to Beijing in 1972. In this photo, Nixon meets with Chinese Communist Party leader Mao Zedong in Beijing on Feb. 22, 1972.
On the 50th anniversary of U.S.-China “ping-pong diplomacy,” Chinese Communist Party officials have marked the occasion with high-profile remarks and expressed hope that the U.S.-China relationship will continue to “break the ice. However, some scholars in the U.S. say that the situation between the U.S. and China today is not as warm as it was 50 years ago, and that the U.S.-China relationship still faces many challenges.
According to comprehensive media reports, Chinese Ambassador to the United States Cui Tiankai, speaking at the opening ceremony of a series of events in Shanghai on April 10 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of “ping pong diplomacy,” said that today, 50 years after the confrontation between the United States and China, both sides should inherit and carry forward the spirit of “ping pong diplomacy. The two sides should carry on the “ping pong diplomacy” and seek win-win cooperation and other ways to get along with each other. CCTV posted a photo of Chinese table tennis player Zhuang Zedong with U.S. representative Cohen.
Xinhua News Agency recalled that American player Cohen got on the Chinese team’s bus by mistake at the World Ping Pong Tournament in Japan 50 years ago, and claimed that “there were reports in the past that the two countries did not have diplomatic relations at that time, that people did not communicate with each other, and that there was hostility between the players, which is untrue.
While the Chinese Communist Party’s official media marked the 50th anniversary of “ping pong diplomacy” in high profile. However, NPR quoted Orville Schell, director of the Center for U.S.-China Relations at the Asia Society, a local think tank, as analyzing the current bipartisan pressure on President Biden to curb China’s economic and military expansion, and former President Trump’s proof that his diplomatic “engagement policy” with the Chinese Communist Party was a failure. The former President Trump proved that the “engagement policy” with the Chinese Communist Party was a failure, and it is difficult for Biden to return to his old ways.
According to Xia Wei, China’s national power is vastly different than it was in 1971. China’s GDP per capita has risen more than 80 times, and the Communist Party’s military is modernizing rapidly in a way that was difficult to match during Mao’s era. Xi Jinping thus has what he calls “backbone”. It is difficult to estimate how much more useful Ping-Pong diplomacy will be 50 years from now.
In addition, senior current affairs commentator Lin He Li told Apple Daily that Beijing is using the media to commemorate the 50th anniversary of “ping pong diplomacy” in a high-profile attempt to extend an olive branch to the United States. But this move is simply impractical and useless. Because the relationship between China and the United States cannot go back to the past, the speed and intensity of competition between the two countries will only increase in the future.
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