摘要
The United States steps up to the plate and uses sport to improve its image in China Two teams of table tennis players from opposite sides of the world cracked the icy relations between China and the United States in 1971 when they played a series of exhibi- tion matches in Beijing.While the nine American players were in the capital city of China,they met with Chinese students and workers,attended social events and visited the Great Wall and Summer Palace.This ping-pong diplomacy helped to pave the way for the then President Richard Nixon’s historic trip to China the following year—the first ever for a U.S.president—and the beginning of rapprochement between the two Cold War adversaries.
