In April 1971, an American taking part in the World Table Tennis Championship in Nagoya, Japan, missed his bus after practice. Glenn Cowan boarded the Chinese team’s bus instead, and Zhuang Zedong stepped forward to greet him. The rest, as they say, is history. Within a few days, the U.S. team received an official invitation … Read more
If you follow China-U.S. relations, you’ve probably heard of “ping-pong diplomacy” – referring to the historic trip by an American table tennis team to China in April 1971. That set the stage for an official visit by Henry Kissinger in July 1971, and eventually full diplomatic normalization between the U.S. and the PRC. Today, amid … Read more
The biggest outcome from the meeting was a promise to keep talking on a whole host of issues. But that achievement shouldn’t be underestimated.