Before I posted an article about the black enrollment incident at the University of Alabama in "Forrest Gump". The real historical event in "Forrest Gump"-the black enrollment event at the University of Alabama
Today I will introduce another historical event in it: Ping-Pong diplomacy.
In the movie, Forrest Gump, played by Tom Hanks, played table tennis in the hospital, joined the national table tennis team, and later visited China. Was the first group of Americans to visit China. There was a game between China and Chinese athletes.
Of course, Forrest Gump is a fictional character in the movie, but ping-pong diplomacy is indeed a real historical event.
This starts with the World Table Tennis Championships held in Nagoya, Japan in 1971.
At that time both the United States and China participated in this championship. The American player Cohen got into a car directly from the stadium, but only found out that it was a Chinese team car. At that time, China and the United States had not formally established diplomatic relations, and the scene was once embarrassing. However, Chinese table tennis player Zhuang Zedong took the initiative to greet him and gave gifts to him. This detail happened to be caught by the reporters present and became an explosive piece of news.
On the eve of the championship, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the State Sports Commission received Mao Zedong’s instructions and decided to invite the US table tennis team to visit China. Then US President Nixon agreed to the Chinese invitation and said: "I never expected that the initiative to China would be realized in the form of a table tennis team visiting Beijing."
April 10, 1971, American Table Tennis The ball delegation and others arrived in Beijing. Become the first batch of Americans allowed to enter China since 1949. The Chinese and American table tennis teams held a friendly match and visited the Great Wall. On the same day, US President Nixon issued a statement, adopting a series of measures to improve and loosen relations between the two countries.
This delegation's visit to China ended the isolation of personnel exchanges between China and the United States for more than 20 years and became a major event that attracted worldwide attention. In 1972, Nixon visited China and published the "Communiqué on the Establishment of Sino-US Diplomatic Relations." Sino-US relations have finally moved on to the path of normalization.
This is the historic "ping pong diplomacy" of "the small ball turns the big ball".
