An end to the revival of hostilities

At an event on Tuesday in New York marking the 40th anniversary of "Ping-Pong Diplomacy", three guests told of how that initial campaign toward re-establishing normalized relations between the United States and China in the early 1970s led to an end of decades of hostility between the countries.

Among those who spoke of that historic period was Henry Kissinger, former US secretary of state, whose secret trip to China in July 1971 had been preceded by one by the US table tennis team. Then there was Jan Berris, vice-president of the National Committee on US-China Relations, who, while on a one-year leave from the State Department, had worked tirelessly at the time of Ping-Pong Diplomacy to prepare an adequate reception for a reciprocal visit that was to be made by the Chinese ping-pong team. Even further memories came from George Brathwaite, a member of the US team that went to China.

Making a sharp contrast to the message put forth by these three speakers are the words we often hear coming from US politicians. In the days and weeks leading up to the Republican National Convention this week in Tampa, Florida, various speakers, ranging from the Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, to the Republican vice-presidential candidate Paul Ryan, and to another former secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, have tried to sow the seeds of hostility between the two countries.