The nine-member U.S. Table Tennis team arrived in the Peoples Republic of China exactly 50 years ago today to play exhibition matches with the superior Chinese national team. That was the beginning of a thaw in U.S. - PRC relations, and despite deep differences with the PRC, today China is one of our major trading partners, something unimaginable 50 years ago.
From today's Washington Post:
"It was April 10, 1971, and the teenage table tennis players were part of an improbable group of Americans who became the first to enter Communist China in two decades and begin a thaw that would evolve over 50 years.
Called “ping-pong diplomacy,” the encounter brought the long hair, blue jeans, rock-and-roll revolution of the United States face-to-face with the grim reality of Communism in China.
It was a crucial break in the bitter, sometimes bloody, rivalry between the two countries and led to President Richard M. Nixon’s visit to China the following year."
Nixon's visit to China happened in the year of the 1972 election, the year the Watergate scandal was set in motion, eventually leading to his resignation in August 1973 as he faced certain impeachment.
(photo: Dell Sweeris, left, in a match with a Chinese player. China Daily)
