Quite a symbol, an exchange of balls (ping-pong) to bring two cold countries closer together.
For 22 years diplomatic relations between China and the United States had been severed when a team of table tennis players allowed to initiate a detente.
It was April 10, 1971. Almost a year later, Richard Nixon will make his first official trip to the Middle Kingdom.
Read also: Between China and the United States, the new star wars
It all started in Nagoya, Japan, at the 31st World Table Tennis Championships.
A young hippie-looking American table tennis player, Glenn Cowan, gets on a Chinese team bus by chance after a late training session.
He establishes a dialogue with a Chinese player, Zhuang Zedong, a great champion.
The affair became publicized and the Chinese authorities, led by Mao, took the opportunity to invite the American delegation to a trip to China.
One of the Americans, Tim Boggan, told
Le Monde
in 2008: “
At that time, we were not aware that Beijing wanted to regain its seat at the UN.
In place of Taiwan.
The Americans, for their part, are seeking to get out of the Vietnamese quagmire and counter Soviet influence.
A welcome worthy of the greatest diplomats
On April 10, the young athletes arrived in Beijing, accompanied by four American journalists from the
Associated Pres
s
news agency
, the weekly
Life
and the
NBC
television channel
.
They will be followed throughout their stay and will make the headlines in their country but also in the rest of the world, such as in France.
The
Figaro
correspondent
in Washington, Jacques Jacquet-Francillon, recounts their arrival:
"
They were treated to the de rigorous smiles and the traditional ceremony of 'popular reception' reserved for 'friends of the Chinese people.'
However, these young Americans are neither
Black Panthers
nor
Weathermen
, nor even members of any progressive organization.
Each of them could be the hero of a
love story
.
"
Le Figaro on April 12, 1971. Le Figaro
On the menu the next day, visit the Great Wall of China and then Tsinghua University, its classes, its truck factory and its machine-tool workshop where the workers are the students and the teachers themselves.
"
The scale of these demonstrations of friendship never ceases to amaze both the most knowledgeable observers of Beijing and the American population, who until then had almost ignored the existence of this ping-pong team suddenly thrown into the sky. the news game
, ”notes the press agencies quoted by
Le Figaro
.
A smiling and charming prime minister
For Jacquet-Francillon “
one could be tempted to believe here that overnight, the face of the world has just changed, that there is no more war in Vietnam, no more black clouds in the sky over Suez and that no one is interested in the price of the hamburger.
On the front page of all the newspapers, only one headline: the Chinese greet Americans with a smile.
"
Even more than with a smile.
On April 14, the Chinese Prime Minister himself, Zhou Enlai, receives the Americans with the other Nigerian, Canadian and Colombian delegations.
Very warm, "
smiling and charming
", the Prime Minister celebrates "
a new page in the relations between the American and Chinese peoples
".
Remarks to which Richard Nixon responds immediately by announcing a package of measures intended to remove "
certain obstacles to the free movement of people and trade between the United States and the People's Republic of China
."
Exchange between the player Glenn Cowan and the Chinese premier reported in Le Figaro of April 15, 1971. Le Figaro
The only ones not to be partying are the Russians.
"
Moscow severely judges the ping-pong operation in Beijing and considers it a maneuver without a future
", headlines
Le Figaro
.
The following year, however, in February 1972, the visit of Richard Nixon will serve as a prelude to the restoration of diplomatic relations between the two countries in 1979. "
Sport has always served the interests of politics
", still confided Tim Boggan to the
World
.
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