![]() ![]() The message to both internal and external parties was clear: New China was a strong nation capable of competing on an international stage Maoist policies were working. As early as Rong Guotan’s victory at the 1959 World Championships in Germany, winning games had become a method of communication to both the outside world and Chinese citizens exhausted by decades of war and adjusting to the norms of a new ideology. For the Chinese team, sport and politics had long been intertwined. The official team from the People’s Republic of China, on the other hand, was a finely honed instrument trained and sponsored by the government. The US team varied widely in age and experience, from 15-year-old Judy Bochenski to adult professionals working at IBM and the United Nations (Griffin 181): “The United States Table Tennis Association (USTTA) was still too poor to send a team, and the players were paying their own way” Judy Bochenski’s father had to borrow $900 from the bank for her airfare (180–181). Tournaments, when they happened, didn’t draw anywhere near the massive crowds that football, baseball, or basketball drew. Instead, it was a basement pastime, a game hastily set up in seedy bars or recreation clubs. The US ping-pong team was a ragtag assortment of amateur enthusiasts-table tennis hadn’t achieved the nationwide popularity in the States that it had in China. The US and PRC teams couldn’t have been more different. But with some maneuvering, Zhou Enlai secured an invitation for the Chinese team from the Japanese table tennis organization. The location made for less-than-neutral territory for the two nations-for two decades, the PRC had maintained a radio silence toward both the United States and Japan. The chance for rapprochement came in 1971, at the World Table Tennis Championships in Nagoya, Japan. And as usual, the University of Michigan managed to find itself in the center of the action. As it happened, they found their excuse in the unlikeliest place: the game of table tennis. In the triangular power struggle between the United States, the USSR, and the PRC, a renewed alliance between America and China could provide both countries some much-needed stability.Īnd yet, after decades of official hostility, the United States and China both needed a face-saving excuse to reconnect. And Chairman Mao’s CCP, shaken by the violence of the Cultural Revolution and by their dying alliance with Soviet Russia, began to seek a way to reach the United States. The Nixon administration in the United States, hounded by the increasingly deadly and unpopular Vietnam War, was desperate for some good news to give the American people. By 1954, that number had been cut in half, and a decade later, in 1965, the People’s Republic wasn’t even listed in the registrar’s table of attendance from foreign countries.īut by the end of the 1960s, both countries had reason to hope for a renewed friendship. As recently as 1940, China had sent more students to U-M than any country other than Canada. At the University of Michigan (U-M), the enrollment of students from mainland China dropped precipitously. The United States refused to acknowledge the PRC, prohibited US citizens from visiting, and instituted a trade embargo the PRC worked to support Communist revolutions worldwide, creating ties with Cuba, North Korea, and North Vietnam. During the political movements, power struggles, and internal revolutions that characterized the first two decades of the PRC, real or fabricated ties to America were often grounds for persecution. The new People’s Republic of China (PRC), meanwhile, took a similar stance toward the capitalist West. Congressional bodies such as the House Un-American Activities Committee questioned and accused US citizens, often groundlessly, of having Communist sympathies. Panic about Communist espionage and influence swept the States, and it wasn’t long before a fervent demagogue, Senator Joseph McCarthy, led the country on an anti-Communist witch-hunt. In 1949, the same year the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) won their victory over the Guomindang Nationalists, Soviet Russia tested its first atomic bomb. For the United States, the Cold War meant a renewed fear of Communist power. As the two countries squared off on either side of the Korean War, ideological polarization infected both countries. The University of Michigan and Ping-Pong Diplomacyīy 1950, official relations between the United States and China had devolved to the point of armed conflict. ![]()
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