"Ping Pong Diplomacy" is the most famous
In early 1971, Zhou Enlai believed that he should seize the opportunity to participate in the World Table Tennis Championships in Nagoya, Japan, and try his best to open up foreign relations. Premier Zhou also wrote a report specifically describing the "political and diplomatic strategy" for this purpose, and finalized the matter after consultation with Chairman Mao.
Before the Chinese team went off to play, Premier Zhou gave special instructions to members of the delegation to have more contact with teams from other countries during the competition, and even invite teams from other countries to visit China if necessary.
This instruction was almost the "Sword of Shang Fang", but at the time I don't know if the members of the Chinese delegation thought that this "Sword of Shang Fang" would be successfully used on the American athletes who wanted to use it most.
One slap cannot make a sound.
During the competition, the famous American table tennis player Glenn Cohen showed great interest and friendliness towards Chinese athletes in several unexpected incidents, and the Chinese athletes also responded "naturally" A great kindness.
From April 4 to 5, Cohen communicated with Liang Geliang and Zhuang Zedong successively, and even exchanged gifts, shook hands and took photos with Zhuang Zedong.
For a time, the friendly relationship between Cohen and Zhuang Zedong became sensational news.
Nixon was seeking to open relations with China at the time and was extremely sensitive to this and other details of China's performance. After a brief hesitation, China's top leaders also chose a radical diplomatic strategy.
On April 6, China transferred the "Report on China's Invitation of the American Table Tennis Team to China" to the United States through Japan at lightning speed, and Nixon responded at the same lightning speed.
On April 10, the American table tennis delegation visited China; the next day, the Chinese delegation paid a return visit.
From high-level political decision-making, to diplomatic communication, to the completion of "people-to-people" exchange activities, the two countries move at the speed of light, fully exposing the huge needs of both parties behind them.
In fact, this is just the last layer of window paper that has been punctured after both countries desperately hope to open up bilateral relations and have made various preparations for this.
The following year, Nixon visited China, and Sino-US relations normalized at the political level.
The story of "Ping Pong Diplomacy" is so famous that many folklore stories have reached the level of "anecdote". Not only China, but also the United States. The movie "Forrest Gump" did not forget to incorporate this incident into Forrest Gump's life.
The publicity of contingency makes many people easily ignore the preparations behind both parties and underestimate the inevitability of the event.
Even in Baidu Encyclopedia, it seems that the "Cohen incident" was an accident. But when we think about it today, if Chinese personnel can get high-level instructions, wouldn’t the US have the same?
Exactly what kind of communication takes place on what occasion is naturally a matter of chance. But if both parties have the original intention of finding every opportunity to communicate from the beginning, it will be like a man and woman who have a crush on each other trying to establish a relationship on a group trip. It is only a matter of time before things happen.
"Go diplomacy" lasted for a long time, but its influence was slightly smaller than that of "ping-pong diplomacy" simply because the target was Japan and not as important as the United States.
I'll be more specific.
After the founding of New China, people-to-people exchanges between China and Japan did not actually cease for a long time. After 1954, the number of non-governmental visits between China and Japan exploded at a rate of several thousand percent every year.
As neighboring countries separated by a strip of water and enemies of many years of war, and with unavoidable large bilateral trade demands, the relationship between China and Japan is actually very delicate.
In Japan, the dispute between the left and right has always existed until today and in the unforeseen future.
In the 1950s, right-wing forces were mainly in power in Japanese politics.
Japanese World War II Class-A war criminal Nobusuke Kishi was exempted from the death penalty and released from prison after the war. He then went through a series of political struggles and took charge of the Japanese government in the mid-to-late 1950s.
Under his rule, a series of unfriendly events such as the "Nagasaki Flag Time" occurred between China and Japan, and bilateral relations were extremely poor.
Matsumura Kenzo (please remember this name), who is in the same Liberal Democratic Party as Nobusuke Kishi, has always opposed Nobusuke Kishi’s pro-American and anti-China political stance and advocates affinity towards China.
In that special era, although there had been a lot of people-to-people exchanges between China and Japan, for top politicians, the political risk of visiting China was extremely high, and it might even ruin their political careers.
Therefore, after the mid-1950s, although Kenzo Matsumura had a lot of private communications with Chinese senior officials, he did not dare to take the risk of visiting China at first.
It was not until 1959 that Kenzo Matsumura was defeated in the Liberal Democratic Party leadership election against Nobusuke Kishi, and also lost the chance to become prime minister, that he decided to give up the pursuit of top political power and put himself Everything is devoted to exchanges with China.