Ping Pong Diplomacy refers to the cultural exchange of ping pong players of the United States and People's Republic of China in the 1970s. This marked a thaw in U.S.-China relations that led the way to a visit to Beijing by President Richard Nixon.
On 6 April, 1971 the U.S. Table Tennis team was in Japan for the 31st World Table Tennis Championship when they received an invitation from their Chinese counterparts to visit China. On 12 April 1972 the team and accompanying journalists became the first Americans to set foot in the Chinese capital since Mao's communist party had come to power 22 years earlier, in 1949.
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