Before the Ping Pong Diplomacy the United Sates and China never had a good relationship. In 1971 The American Ping-Pong and Chinese team were at 31st World Table Tennis (ping-pong) Championships which was held in Nagoya, Japan from March 28 through April 7, 1971. During the Championships the two teams had meet, because Glenn Cowan, a member of the U.S. national ping pong team, happened to get on the Chinese team bus at the Ping-pong competition. None of the Chinese players on the bus said anything, as the baffled Cowan wondered what to do. On the bus there was a player named Zhuang Zedong a three-time world men's champion, who felt sorry for Cowan and started to talk to him, on the way to talk to him Zedong's teammate were telling him not to do it because the team leader said the no one should communicate with Americans, But Zhuang remember what chairman Mao said, that is was time to start to improve relations with The United States.
President Nixon meets with China's Communist Party...
Henry Kissinger and Chairman Mao, with Zhou Enlai ...
English: US President Richard Nixon and Chinese Pr...Zhuang gave Cowan a silk-screen portrait for a gift. Later during the competition Cowan gave Zedong a t-shirt featuring a peace sign. These small gestures lead to a formal invitation to the American team to visit China, a visit that signaled the arrival of a new era in U.S.-China relations (Huang, 2008).
Before the Ping Pong Diplomacy, in 1949 the United States of America had a policy to blockade the People's Republic of China, but this did not mean they were enemies. During the late 60's the Soviet Union a great enemy of the United State had an increasing number of troops on the northern border of the People's Republic of China. So the Nixon administration decided to change its foreign tactic by improving The United Sates relationship with China or...