The close and frequent relationship between China and United States that we see nowadays is a rather recent phenomenon starting in the 1970s. China never receive much attention from the US public, hidden for centuries. It is understandable, however, since China and the United States are both huge nations, separate by the pacific ocean, and on two opposite sides of Earth, China on Eurasia, and the US on Americas.
When US get to finally know about China, it was the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th, when China was a colony of many different European nations, each of which has a sphere of influence in different area of China, and it happened because America want open access to China as a market for its commercial exports, as expressed in its "open door policy", and because America send troops to participate in the eight-nation alliance to quell the boxer rebellion near Beijing.
As you can see, the relationship between China and America didn't get of to a good start. However, it did not get any better since then. America was known for its isolationist policies, which went to full effect in the early 20th century, especially in the 1920s and 1930s. It is a miracle that US president Woodrow Wilson manage to get the US to participate in the first world war. But, once the war ended, the US, with its government and population, turn back on its own issues and improvements. The only contacts the US have with foreign nations are commercial transactions and business issues on the individual level. Other than that, the few times America become did get involved with foreign nations, are mainly focused on nations within the Americas, notably Latin America.
In the 1920s, a surge of red scare stimulate a new sense of nativism within US and the US public become fearful of immigrants. This lead to immigration regulations that cut back on allowed immigrants, which further alienated US with the rest of the world. The 1930s saw the worst economic crisis ever happened to US, the great depression. This means US have even less willingness and capability to interact with any foreign nations, not just China.
World War 2 saw a resurgence of the US's willingness to get involved with international issues. It also saw a new connection between US and China, as allies fighting together against Japan. But this connection was short lived, as China soon becomes a communist nation after the success of Mao in the Chinese Civil War. Viewing the communists as one group, the US government and public view China simply as a puppet belonging to the head of the communist bloc, the Soviet Union, and regard the Chinese as revolutionary radicals. On the other hand, considering that the only past interests America had in China are mostly business related, it is not hard to see why the Chinese believe the Americans are capitalist pigs. This further alienates the two nations and inspire hostility between them, and for the 2 decades up to 1970, US didn't communicate with China and no Americans have never set foot in China,
With these context in mind, it is not difficult to see why when the Chinese government invite the US table tennis team, who are participating in the 1971 championships in Japan, to visit China, it is called "the ping heard round the world". And what is so amazing about it is how it all begins on an individual level.
Zhuang Zedong, and his teammates in the Chinese national table tennis team were told to avoid any contact with the Americans as they arrived in Japan. However, when US player Glenn Cowan, a self-described hippie, hopped on the Chinese team's bus after missing his own, Zhuang personally stepped forward to greet Cowan and presented the teenager with a gift: a silk-screen picture of China's Huangshan mountains. Cowan returned the gesture the following day by giving Zhuang t-shirt emblazoned with a peace symbol and the Beatles' lyric "Let it Be". The incident was caught on film by Photographers, and when the news was released in Chinese newspapers, Mao Zedong took it as a political opportunity to open a dialogue with the US, something both side had wanted to do, but was never able to do so.
Chairman Mao believed ties with the Americans might serve as a deterrent against the Russians, whose relationship with China had soured, following Nikita Khrushchev's de-Stalinization and the Sino-Soviet Split, and produced a series of bloody border clashes. On the other hand, US president Richard Nixon had made opening China a top priority of his administration. And this incident help act as the spark that begin this process of connecting the US with China.
Soon after, as the US team was preparing to leave Nagoya, Mao shocked the world by inviting them to make an all-expense paid visit to China. Even President Nixon was surprised, as he wrote in his memoirs, that he "had never expected that the China initiative would come to fruition in the form of a ping-pong team."
The 15 members of the diverse American table tennis team, including the hippie Glenn Cowan, a college professor, a Guyanese immigrant, and a pair of high school-age girls, none of them were particularly accomplished at ping-pong, considering their team was ranked 24th in the world, suddenly become the most important American diplomats on the planet as their historic visit began on April 10, 1971.
The US team spent 10-days traveling through Guangzhou, Beijing and Shanghai. Treated like visiting dignitaries and lavished with banquets and meals, the team get to see and enjoy the culture and landscape of China, including the summer palace and a revolution-themed opera, and they also get to participate in a series of exhibition ping-pong matches held under the slogan "Friendship First and Competition Second". Culminating in a meeting with Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai in Beijing's Great hall of the People, the trip was regarded by Chinese competitor Zheng Minzhi as "important" in achieving "what cannot be achieved through proper diplomatic channels".
By the time the American table tennis team left China on April 17, the effect of the "ping heard round the world" was already bearing diplomatic fruit. President Nixon had announced that the US was easing its travel bans and trade embargoes against China and the US and Chinese governments soon opened new back channel communications with one another. By February 1972, a pivotal moment came when Richard Nixon personally visited the People's Republic, marking the first time in history that an American president had traveled to the Chinese mainland.
In subsequent years, Nixon noted that the Chinese leaders "seemed to enjoy the method used to achieve the result almost as much as the result itself." And he was not wrong, according to a quote from Mao himself: "The little ball," he said, "moves the Big Ball" -- the ball of progress.
Bibliography
https://www.history.com/news/ping-pong-diplomacy
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/ping-pong-diplomacy-60307544/
http://www.bbc.com/news/av/magazine-25836922/how-ping-pong-diplomacy-brought-nixon-to-china
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ping-pong_diplomacy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glenn_Cowan
Nice post, Shiqin! Interesting commentary on "ping pong diplomacy" and how it was able to help thaw decades of ice. I would like to provide some more contextualization for why the US became so cold with China in first place. During the Chinese Civil War, the United States heavily support the nationalist side. They offered millions of dollars of aid through military equipment and advisors, and heavily promoted the nationalists' leader as a bulwark against communism at home. It came to light that such aid was often being misused to buy luxurious items for Chiang (the leader), and that there was much corruption in the ranks of the party. As such, when the communists seemed to be winning and the United States released the White Papers, blaming Chiang's regime and their mistakes for the loss, many Americans viewed it as a heavy loss and waste of money, further compounding their fears.
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