How ping pong diplomacy changed the world, 50 years on
SHANGHAI: It was 50 years ago, but Zhang Xielin still remembers vividly how a shaggy-haired American table tennis player stepped onto the Chinese team’s bus, a chance encounter which would shape history.
It was the world championships in Nagoya, Japan, and Glenn Cowan mistakenly hopped in with Zhang and his teammates — an awkward moment because the United States and China were then deeply at odds.
“We were on the bus and were talking and laughing,” said Zhang, now 80. “But when we realised that an American had entered the bus, we fell silent.”
The Chinese triple world champion Zhuang Zedong eventually came forward and famously broke the ice, giving Cowan a silk embroidery as a souvenir from China.
They did not know it at the time, but it was the spark for China and the US to begin normalising relations, in what became known as “ping-pong diplomacy”.
Zhang, a doubles world champion and later China’s coach, recalled: “Mr Zhuang understood that there was a difference between the American people and the American government, and that we should be nice to American people, so he took the initiative to chat with Glenn.”
Photographers captured Zhuang and a 19-year-old Cowan shaking hands and smiling.
“The newspaper came out the next day and it seemed that China and the US were about to have a relationship,” said Zhang.
Days later, on April 10, 1971, the US team became the first Americans to step foot in China for nearly a quarter of a century when they were invited to play friendly matches in the country.
The thaw saw President Richard Nixon visit China in February 1972, and a Chinese table tennis squad visit the US. In 1979, formal relations were established between the two countries.
Yao Zhenxu played Cowan, who died in 2004, during the Americans’ groundbreaking trip.
Yao still remembers the score, he won 21-12, 21-14, and said Cowan thanked him afterwards for “a serious game”.
The US team were vastly inferior to the Chinese, so the hosts sometimes let their visitors win points in the spirit of sportsmanship and goodwill.
Now 74, Yao said it was only afterwards that he realised he played a part in something historic.
“Because of ping-pong diplomacy, we changed the world order, and the people of China and the US started friendly exchanges.”
Yao and Zhang appeared in Shanghai on Saturday to mark 50 years of ping-pong diplomacy, with city authorities hosting an event with speeches and friendly amateur matches.
This comes at a time when relations between Washington and Beijing have deteriorated markedly over a number of issues, notably trade, China’s Uighur minority and a clampdown in Hong Kong.
In a recorded speech to mark the 50th anniversary, China’s ambassador in Washington, Cui Tiankai, accused some in the US of “ideological bias and zero-sum thinking”.
But he and Chinese state media took a largely positive tone, with the Xinhua news agency hailing ping-pong diplomacy’s “wonderful legacy”.
Yao and Zhang hope the spirit of 1971 can help shape future relations between the world’s top two economies for the better.