On April 10, 1971, the U.S. table tennis team was invited to visit China. Fifty years later, on April 10, 2021, the Beijing authorities deliberately revisited the “Ping-Pong diplomacy” in an apparent attempt to mitigate the disastrous consequences of their own misjudgment of the situation and the sanctions imposed by various countries, and thus break the global siege once again. global siege. To be sure, despite Beijing’s frequent diplomatic offensives this year to pressure the new U.S. administration, it is no longer possible to get the situation the Chinese Communist Party wants.
50 Years of Ping-Pong Diplomacy: China’s Communist Party Hopes for a Warming of U.S.-China Relations
On April 10, a friendly ping pong match was held in Shanghai between Chinese students and U.S. Consulate General officials, sponsored by the Shanghai Friendship Association with Foreign Countries and other Chinese Communist Party officials. The event aimed to create a friendly atmosphere and cool down the intense political relations between the U.S. and China. James Heller, U.S. Consul General in Shanghai, said, “Ping pong brings people together.”
Today marks the 50th anniversary of the famous “ping pong diplomacy” between the United States and China, according to an article on the U.S. Embassy in Beijing website. The thaw in diplomatic relations between the United States and China was due to an unexpected cause – ping pong.
The U.S. Embassy recalls that during the 1971 World Table Tennis Championships in Nagoya, Japan, U.S. ping pong player Gerber Cowan rode on the same bus as the Chinese team. Top Chinese player Zhuang Zedong started a conversation with the American and gave him a gift. The next day, Cowan presented the Chinese player with a T-shirt with red, white and blue peace symbols. These friendly exchanges prompted Mao to invite the U.S. table tennis team to visit mainland China. Time magazine described the trip as “The ping heard round the world.
Xu Yinsheng (82), who coached China’s men’s team at the 1971 World Championships, was there for the event on October 10 and expressed his anticipation for the resumption of relations between the two countries.
The French broadcaster reported that on the 50th anniversary of the “ping pong diplomacy” between Beijing and Washington, there has been little movement on either side to mark the occasion. A half-century honeymoon has turned into a highly tense relationship and strategic confrontation. After Biden took power, Yang Jiechi declared at the first U.S.-China High-Level Dialogue in Alaska that Beijing “does not want to eat the U.S.”. Washington, for its part, has stepped up its efforts to form international alliances to counter Beijing’s expansion.
“Mao shouts “My Grandpa Zhuang” at the beginning and end of “Ping-Pong Diplomacy
The so-called “ping-pong diplomacy” originated when Cohen, an American table tennis player competing in Japan from March 28 to April 7, 1971, accidentally boarded the Chinese team’s bus and was approached by Chinese player Zhuang Zedong, who exchanged gifts with him.
Cohen was caught on camera by reporters as he got off the bus and became breaking news. The next day, Cohen gave Zhuang Zedong a sweatshirt with a peace sign and the words “Let It Be” and hugged him in return.
Later, Harrison, the deputy leader of the U.S. team, went to the hotel where the Chinese team was staying and met with the head of the Chinese delegation to ask if the U.S. team could be invited to visit China.
On April 3, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Communist Party of China received a report from the table tennis team and submitted it to Premier Zhou Enlai, stating on the report that it was untimely for a team from the U.S. government, which supported the government of Chiang Kai-shek in Taiwan, to visit China.
After approving the Foreign Ministry’s opinion, Zhou Enlai forwarded this report to Mao Zedong. Mao circled this report and returned it to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs where his niece Wang Hailong filed it.
According to Wikipedia, that night, after Mao saw the foreign press report on the exchange of gifts between Zhuang Zedong and Cohen, he suddenly exclaimed, “My Grandpa Zhuang!” Then, he immediately ordered an invitation to the U.S. table tennis team to visit China.
Zhuang Zedong also said in an interview with CCTV at the time that Mao Zedong called out “my Grandpa Zhuang” and after he finished he set up the invitation for the U.S. team to visit China, and this got the staff down there to stay put. Because Mao had an order that what he said after taking sleeping pills did not count, so no one below dared to move.
Zhuang Zedong said these staff members were very experienced in politics, so they asked Mao to say it again. Mao said, go and invite the U.S. team to visit China, or it will be too late, “What I said today after taking sleeping pills also counts, go.”
On April 10 of the same year, 15 American table tennis players and related personnel were invited to visit Guangzhou, Beijing, and Shanghai, becoming the first American groups allowed to enter Chinese territory after the Chinese Communist Party’s establishment of government in 1949. The following year, the Chinese team returned to the United States, visiting eight cities.
This event had a tremendous impact on U.S.-China relations, and has been described as a “small ball pushing a big ball”, opening the door to the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and the United States. A year later, then U.S. President Richard Nixon visited China.
But to this day, the content of Mao Zedong’s “Grandpa Zhuang” has long been altered by the Chinese Communist Party’s official media.
In a July 21, 2009, page three report in China Sports News, the editor changed Mao’s original words to “My Zhuang Zedong” without Zhuang’s consent, and Zhuang expressed his dissatisfaction and said in his weblog that changing Mao’s original words at will “distorts history and deceives the masses “.
Icebreaker in U.S.-China relations allows CCP to linger
In the early years of the 1960s, the two largest communist countries were in a brawl. Great debates and debates broke out between China and the Soviet Union, involving politics, culture, economics, and diplomacy, and Sino-Soviet relations became thoroughly hostile.
By May 1966, when Mao Zedong led the Communist Party in the Cultural Revolution, Sino-Soviet relations were completely frozen. The two countries then fought at the border, culminating in the Zhenbao Island incident in 1969. Mao was forced to seek a break from his powerful neighbor to the north and turn to the United States.
Tensions between China and the Soviet Union continued until the eve of the June 4, 1989, incident, when the then General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party, Mikhail Gorbachev, made an official visit to China and relations between the two countries eased. However, within two years, the Soviet Communist Party collapsed and the Soviet Eastern Socialist camp disintegrated, leaving the CCP as a lone wolf with three or two small jackals.
Now, the totalitarian Chinese Communist Party is under global siege again, but it is difficult to change its wolf nature, so the Communist Party’s attempts to soften the U.S. are in jeopardy.
In the 50 years since 1971, the Chinese Communist Party under Mao Zedong has gone from shouting “Down with U.S. imperialism” to using ping pong balls as a medium to achieve reconciliation, and later when Xi Jinping met with President Trump, he said, “We have a thousand reasons to make Sino-U.S. relations better, and no reason to make them worse. “, but now he still faces the United States and the world in the posture of a war wolf.
As French journalist Gulley said: Communist China joined the United Nations, joined the WTO, hosted the Olympics and the World Expo, and rose to profit from globalization. For 50 years, many experts and politicians in the United States believed that helping China develop its economy would push Communist China to embrace universal values and move toward democracy. As a result, through the “One Belt, One Road” and the coronavirus epidemic, the Chinese Communist Party has expanded its influence globally and continues to promote its authoritarian management model …….
Fifty years after Ping-Pong diplomacy, the world, deceived by the CCP, has finally come to a consensus: the CCP’s totalitarian power has not changed at all.
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