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In 1971, an invitation was extended to the US table tennis team to visit what had been a reclusive, inward-looking China.
Key points:
- China hosted the International Table Tennis Federation Teams World Championships this month
- It is the first international sporting event to take place in China since the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics
- China's border remains closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic
It began a significant thaw in cold war relations that saw president Richard Nixon visit a year later meeting with China's then-chairman of the Chinese Communist Party, Mao Zedong.
It was dubbed ping-pong diplomacy.
There is no suggestion such a thaw in the currently strained relations between the two nations is about to happen again. But it is table tennis that has been welcomed back into China as the rest of the world is kept out by borders that are closed due to the country's strict COVID-zero policy.
With the exception of table tennis and the Beijing Winter Olympic Games in February, all other international events — sporting and otherwise — have been postponed or cancelled.
The Asian Games, the largest multi-sport event outside the Olympics, and football's AFC Asian Cup have both become casualties of China's lockdown that has extended well beyond any other country.
So, what makes table tennis so special?
"I believe mainly it's due to the history of table tennis in this country," Steve Dainton, the Australian chief executive of the International Table Tennis Federation, told The Ticket.
"We have a rich history, it's known as the national ball — the little white ping pong ball that has captured the nation for over 50 years.
"It was the first sport to have a world championship in 1961 in Beijing, we were one of the first international federations to recognise the People's Republic of China."
Relationships are important to China. So are medals.
Another bag of gold is another opportunity to flex its soft-power muscles, and there's been plenty of flexing during the month of October.
International athletes flew into Chengdu on charter flights for the ITTF Teams World Championships, entering a closed-loop system, with extra security and volunteers in hazmat suits.
China beat Germany 3-0 to claim the men's title, and beat Japan 3-0 to win the women's crown.
A round of the WTT professional league was then staged in Macao, where China's superstars Sun Yingsha and Wang Chuqin won the women's title and Wang Chuqin, respectively.
This weekend, the finals of the WTT league are being decided in Xinxiang, with the world's highest-ranked competitors invited to share in the one million dollar prize pool distributed equally between women and men.
The odds overwhelmingly favour the locals. It's no wonder the red carpet has been rolled out and special exemptions have been granted.
"[Logistically] it was a roller coaster ride like no other, that's for sure," Dainton said from Xinxiang.
"There were many moments when we weren't sure that it was going to happen. We saw a lot of other sports being cancelled or postponed … it was on a scale like we've never had before.
"We're not the biggest sport in many parts of the world ...[but] we are a national sport here in China.
"The scale of what they made for us at the World Championships and these other events is beyond our imagination."
Television ratings bonanza
The world championships had a cumulative audience of over one billion while the women's final had one of the year's biggest sporting audiences — more than 53 million in China alone.
"We get record numbers all the time from a viewership point of view … generally the people just love table tennis," Dainton said.
"It just shows you the superpower strength that they have in terms of table tennis sports stars."
One of the all-time greats of the sport is China's Liu Guoliang. A two-time Olympic champion, with seven world championship gold medals, and a well-known coach, he is now an executive vice president of the sport.
Dainton says it is Liu's status and connections that certainly helped pull off what many thought impossible during a month that also coincided with the extraordinary security arrangements around the National People's Congress of the Chinese Communist Party.
"Actually, I like to think this is round two of ping pong diplomacy. We would like to see that our sport can help bridge the gap between understandings between the international community and the Chinese community.
"I think these few events here are a small step in helping us to achieve that."