用简单的英文叙述一下乒乓外交事件

精选知识

Ping Pong Diplomacy (Chinese: 乒乓外交) refers to the exchange of ping pong players of the United States and People's Republic of China (PRC) in the 1970s. The event marked a thaw in U.S.-China relations that paved 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 PRC counterparts to visit the PRC. On 12 April 1971 the team and accompanying journalists became the first Americans to set foot in the PRC capital since Mao's communist party had come to power 22 years earlier, in 1949. The meeting was facilitated by the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations.