Thursday, May 27 | 5:00 pm – 6:00 pm ET
Watch on YouTube

Since 1949, clashing ideologies, regional conflicts, and opposing security and economic interests strained US-China relations. Yet, the 1971 World Table Tennis Tournament Championship in Nagoya, Japan, marked a turning point following a friendly encounter between table tennis players Glen Cowan and Zhuang Zedong from the US and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) teams.

The resulting ping-pong diplomacy and exchange of table tennis players between the United States and the PRC signaled progress in US-China relations. It eventually led to visits to the PRC by then-National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger in 1971 and US President Richard Nixon in 1972. In 1978, the two countries formally normalized relations.

Join us in commemorating 50 years since the start of ping-pong diplomacy as we look back on how this historic moment of sports diplomacy and cultural exchange transformed US-China diplomatic relations.

Meet the Panelists:

• • The Honorable Julia Chang Bloch (moderator): president of the US-China Education Trust, former US ambassador to Nepal, and former USAID assistant administrator of Food for Peace and voluntary assistance and assistant administrator for Asia and the Near East.
  • Mr. Robert Daly: director of the Wilson Center’s Kissinger Institute on China and the United States, former American director of the Johns Hopkins University-Nanjing University Center for Chinese and American Studies, and former cultural exchanges officer at US Embassy Beijing.
  • The Honorable Chas W. Freeman, Jr principal American interpreter during President Nixon’s 1972 visit to Beijing, former assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs, and former US ambassador to Saudi Arabia.
  • The Honorable J. Stapleton Roy: founding director emeritus of the Wilson Center’s Kissinger Institute on China and the United States; career ambassador with assignments in Singapore, the People’s Republic of China, and Indonesia; and former assistant secretary of state for intelligence and research.

For more information on our panelists, read their biographies.

Image: President Richard Nixon, Premier Zhou Enlai, and First Lady Pat Nixon at a table tennis exhibition in China in 1972 (Courtesy Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum).