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Today would have been first day of #SHAFR2020. An abstract of my paper, 'Ping-Pong Diplomacy’s Return Leg: A Transnational Encounter in the U.S.-China Rapprochement', is online. Here's a thread on what I would have said in New Orleans @SHAFRConference https://shafr.memberclicks.net/assets/docs/Millwood%20Pete.pdf
The first leg of ping-pong diplomacy is justifiably well remembered: it was a critical breakthrough in US-China rapprochement and the first public evidence of the changing relationship between Nixon's America & Mao's China.
Less well remembered is the return leg of the sporting match up that took place in the US a year later. The visit was big news in 1972, though, and the first official delegation sent by the People's Republic of China to the US since the Chinese revolution.
In spite of two decades of enmity—the last time many Americans saw Chinese Communists had been in Korea—the players were widely welcomed, by five-digit crowds in stadiums like Detroit's Cobo Hall but also into schools & private homes.
Still, some Americans did object to the visit: the "Christian fundamentalist" Carl McIntire protested the Communist Chinese at every match, alongside pro-Chiang Kai-shek Chinese Americans who goaded the PRC players to defect while on US soil.
The National Committee on US-China Relations hosted the tour & used it to showcase (self-perceived) American virtues—egalitarianism, productivity, diversity—& portray these as common values with China. Here's world champion Zhuang Zedong with American choreographer Judith Jamison
The visit was politically important: Nixon welcomed the players to the White House, appointed White House aide John Scali to oversee the tour, & paid for a large State Department security detail for the players. Nixon even worried that the tour might overshadow his Moscow summit.
But its greatest historical significance was as a moment of reconciliation between the American & Chinese people. The visit showed that Nixon's secret diplomacy with China could be broadened to include the participation of millions of enthusiastic ordinary Americans. And it was:
The National Committee (still active today, @NCUSCR) went on to host more than a dozen further Chinese delegations in the US before 1978 and sent 20 groups of Americans to China before the US-China diplomatic "normalization" of that year.
The ping pong return leg and many of those further visits are covered in my book, under contract with @cambUP_History, on how people-to-people contacts helped remake US-China relations in the 1970s. My SHAFR paper was drawn from a chapter focussed on the second ping pong visit.
It is appropriately humid, wet, and (fairly) hot in London today; a reminder of what we're missing in New Orleans! Sad not to see old friends and learn of exciting new research. Nonetheless, thanks to @juliairwin, Gretchen, & @shafrorg for putting together the virtual conference!
