Diplomatie du ping-pong

La Diplomatie du ping-pong (chinois : 乒乓外交) se réfère au échange de joueurs de ping pong entre les Etats-Unis et la Chine dans les années 1970. L'événement a permis un renouveau dans les relations sino-américaines à l'occasion de la visite du président américain Richard Nixon en 1972 en Chine.

Histoire

L'équipe de tennis de table américaine se rend au Japon en 1971 pour les 31e Championnat du Monde de tennis de table. A cette occasion, la délégation américaine est invitée le 6 avril par ses homologues chinois à visiter la Chine. Le sport a toujours joué un rôle important dans la diplomatie de la République Démocratique de Chine, à l'instar du slogan "L'amitié d'abord, la compétition après". Le 12 Avril 1971 l'équipe de ping-pong américaine accompagnée de journalistes est la première délégation américaine de sport a foulé le sol chinois depuis 1949. La recontre est facilitée par le Comité National sur relations Etats-Unis-Chine. Avant la visite des joueurs américains, seulement 11 américains avait été admis sur le sol de la RDC pour une durée d'une semaine. Il s'agissait de membres des Black Panther que la Chine considérait comme des ambassadeuyrs américains. Les visites en Chine de citoyens américains étaient donc encore marginales. Certains notables américains, tel que le sénateur Eugene McCarthy, avaient toutefois exprimé leur volonté de visiter la Chine après les élections présidentielles de 1968.

Selon le joueur Tim Boggan, membre de la délégation américaine (History of U.S. Table Tennis), trois incidents ont émaillé la visite. Le gallois H. Roy Evans, qui fut ensuite President de la Fédération Internationale de Tennis de Table (FITT), a prétendu avoir visité la Chine avant les Championnats du Monde et a suggéré aux autorités sportives chinoises et au secrétaire général du PC Zhou Enlai une voie diplopmatique pour la Chine qui passerait par le sport à l'occasion des compétitions internationales. Further, the American player Leah "Miss Ping" Neuberger, the 1956 World Mixed Doubles Champion and nine-time U.S. Open Women's Singles Champion, was traveling at the time with the Canadian Table Tennis Team that had been invited by China to visit the country. China diplomatically extended its approval of Leah Neuberger's application for a visa to the entire American team. The third incident, perhaps the most likely trigger, was the unexpected but dramatic meeting between the flamboyant American player Glenn Cowan and the Chinese player Zhuang Zedong, a three-time world champion and winner of many other table tennis events. Zhuang Zedong described the incident^[1] in a 2007 talk at the USC U.S.-China Institute.

The events leading up to the encounter began when Glenn Cowan missed his team bus one afternoon after his practice in Nagoya during the 31st World Table Tennis Championship. Cowan had been practicing for 15 minutes with the Chinese player, Liang Geliang, when a Japanese official came and wanted to close the training area. As Cowan looked in vain for his team bus, a Chinese player waved to him to get on his Chinese team bus. Moments after his casual talking through an interpreter to the Chinese players, Zhuang Zedong came up from his back seat to greet him and presented him with a silk-screen portrait of Huangshan Mountains, a famous product from Hangzhou. Cowan wanted to give something back, but all he could find from his bag was a comb. The American hesitantly replied, "I can't give you a comb. I wish I could give you something, but I can't." When it was time for them to get off the bus, hordes of photographers and journalists were waiting for them. In the political climate of the 1960s, the sight of an athlete of Communist China with an athlete of the United States was sure to garner attention. Glenn Cowan later bought a T-shirt with a red, white and blue, peace emblem flag and the words "Let It Be," which he presented to Zhuang Zedong at another chance meeting.

When a journalist asked Cowan, "Mr. Cowan, would you like to visit China?", he answered, "Well, I'd like to see any country I haven't seen before--Argentina, Australia, China, ... Any country I haven't seen before." "But what about China in particular? Would you like to go there?" "Of course," said Glenn Cowan.

During an interview in 2002 with the famous TV personality Chen Luyu, Zhuang Zedong told more of the story: "The trip on the bus took 15 minutes, and I hesitated for 10 minutes. I grew up with the slogan 'Down with the American imperialism!' And during the Cultural Revolution, the string of class struggle was tightened unprecedentedly, and I was asking myself, 'Is it okay to have anything to do with your No. 1 enemy?'" Zhuang recalled remembering that Chairman Mao Zedong met Edgar Snow on the Rostrum of Tiananmen on the National Day in 1970 and said to Snow that China should now place its hope on American people. Zhuang looked in his bag and first went through some pins, badges with Mao's head, silk handkerchiefs, and fans. But he felt these were not decent enough to be a good gift. He finally picked the said silk portrait of Huangshan Mountains. On the following day, many Japanese newspapers carried photographs of Zhuang Zedong and Glenn Cowan.

Fichier:Nixon Mao 1972-02-29.png

Richard Nixon meets with Mao Zedong in 1972.

When the Chinese Department of Foreign Affairs received a report that the U.S. Table Tennis Team hoped to get invited to visit China, as usual, the Department declined. Zhou Enlai and Mao Zedong initially agreed with the decision, but when Mao Zedong saw the news in Dacankao, a newspaper accessible only to high-ranking government officials, he decided to invite the U.S. Table Tennis Team. It was reported that Mao Zedong said, "This Zhuang Zedong not only plays table tennis well, but is good at foreign affairs, and he has a mind for politics." On April 10, 1971, nine American players, four officials, and two spouses stepped across a bridge from Hong Kong to the Chinese mainland and then spent their time during April 11–17 playing exhibition matches, touring the Great Wall and Summer Palace, and watching a ballet.

In February 1972, U.S. President Richard Nixon paid his historic visit to China.^[2] Two months after Richard Nixon's visit, Zhuang Zedong visited the U.S. as the head of a Chinese table-tennis delegation, April 12–30, 1972. Also on the itinerary were Canada, Mexico and Peru. However, China's attempts to reach out to countries through "ping pong diplomacy" were not always successful, such as when the All Indonesia Table Tennis Association (PTMSI) refused China's invitation in October 1971, claiming that accepting the PRC's offer would improve the PRC's reputation. Because neither Soviet athletes nor journalists appeared in China following the appearance of the American players and journalists, one speculation is that the act showed the equal scorn of both countries towards the USSR.

During the week of June 9, 2008, the Ping Pong Diplomacy event was commemorated at a three-day event held at the Richard Nixon Library and Birthplace in Yorba Linda, California.

Voir aussi

Références

Modèle:Refliste

Boggan, Tim. History of U.S. Table Tennis

Additional reading

Bradsher, Henry S. “China: The Radical Offensive.” Asian Survey 13 (1973): 989-1009. JSTOR. UCLA Young Research Library, Los Angeles, CA. 25 Jan. 2008
Mathews, Jay. “The Strange Tale of American Attempts to Leap the Wall of China:The Strange History of American Attempts...To Breach the great Wall of China.” New York Times 18 Apr. 1971: ProQuest. UCLA Young Research Library, Los Angeles, CA. 25 Jan. 2008
Schwartz, Harry. “Triangular Politics and China.” New York Times 19 Apr. 1971: 37. ProQuest. UCLA Young Research Library, Los Angeles, CA. 25 Jan. 2008
Van der Kroef, Justus M. “Before the Thaw: Recent Indonesian Attitudes toward People's China.” Asian Survey 13 (1973): 513-30. JSTOR. UCLA Young Research Library, Los Angeles, CA. 25 Jan. 2008
Wu, Eugene. “Recent Developments in Chinese Publishing.” The China Quarterly 53 (1973): 134-138. JSTOR. UCLA Young Research Library, Los Angeles, CA. 25 Jan. 2008

Liens externes

Zhuang Zedong 2007 talk about the 1971 encounter
PBS article
Smithsonian Magazine article
New round of ping pong diplomacy The Guardian Tuesday June 10, 2008

Crises et conflits majeurs entre le monde occidental et le monde communiste

Crises et conflits mineurs entre le monde occidental et le monde communiste

Crises dans le monde communiste

Crises dans le monde occidental

Autres crises régionales

Categorie:Relations Chine–Etats-Unis Categorie:Sport en RépubliqueSport in the People's Republic of China Categorie:Diplomatie Categorie:Relations Internationales Categorie:Sport et politique

[1] ttp://uschina.usc.edu/ShowFeature.aspx?articleID=1067

[2] On This Day, 1972: Nixon Makes Historic Visit to China, BBC.co.uk, accessed on June 12, 2008

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