Improbable Diplomats: How Ping-Pong Players, Musicians, and Scientists Remade US-China Relations (Cambridge Studies in US Foreign Relations)

In 1971, Americans made two historic visits to China that would transform relations between the two countries. One was by US official Henry Kissinger; the other, earlier, visit was by the US table tennis team. Historians have mulled over the transcripts of Kissinger's negotiations with Chinese leaders. However, they have overlooked how, alongside these diplomatic talks, a rich program of travel and exchange had begun with ping-pong diplomacy. Improbable Diplomats reveals how a diverse cast of Chinese and Americans – athletes and physicists, performing artists and seismologists – played a critical, but to date overlooked, role in remaking US-China relations. Based on new sources from more than a dozen archives in China and the United States, Pete Millwood argues that the significance of cultural and scientific exchanges went beyond reacquainting the Chinese and American people after two decades of minimal contact; exchanges also powerfully influenced Sino-American diplomatic relations and helped transform post-Mao China. "Historians, China specialists, and readers interested in US-China relations will be attracted to this revisionist account of the origins of today's US-China relationship. The book reveals the pivotal role of a diverse cast of Chinese and American athletes, scientists, and artists in rebuilding the relationship between their societies in the 1970s"-- Provided by publisher Cover Copyright_page Contents Figures Acknowledgments Abbreviations Introduction Prologue 1 By Popular Demand 2 Ping-Pong Diplomacy’s Return Leg and After 3 New Liaisons 4 Familiarity Breeds Contempt 5 Asking for More in Exchange 6 Political Science Epilogue: The New Normal Conclusion: Ties That Bind? Bibliography Index