Considering the fact that the American team has requested several times to visit China, and that they have expressed warm and friendly feelings, the decision has been made that we will invite them, including the team leaders, to visit our country. Entry visas can be obtained in Hong Kong. If the travel funds are insufficient, we can subsidize them.
Zhuang Zedong insists the message was followed up by a personal call to him directly from Chairman Mao.
At 10:45 AM Rufford Harrison was standing just outside the Miyako Hotel, “trying to hail a cab and none would stop.” Frustrated, Harrison stood waving his arm until “Finally one stopped and two Chinese got out.” It was the head of the Chinese delegation, former military analyst Song Zhong, along with his interpreter. Harrison presumed they were on the way to see the English delegation to organize their trip to Beijing. Instead, Song walked right up to him and asked, “How would you respond to an invitation to visit China?”
Harrison stood there on the street, trying to keep his mouth closed. “I was thinking, how can I avoid showing too much outward signs of joy? How can I keep a straight face?” Trying to think of something to say, he mentioned that it might be hard for the younger members of the team to afford the fees to reschedule their airline tickets. “Don’t worry,” said Song. “It can be arranged.” The wealthiest nation in the world was about to accept a handout from a country still in the process of industrialization. “It was,” remembered Harrison, “the sort of offer you couldn’t refuse, in Godfather terms.”
Song’s wording was precise, brilliant, that of a professional dealing with an amateur. From the beginning, it was important for the Chinese to adhere to their marshaled version of the truth. America was going to play the role of supplicant. China was the Middle Kingdom. America was arriving empty-handed; China was the generous host, without a care in the world other than the health and comfort of her guests.
Harrison hurried back in the hotel to talk to Steenhoven. He was nowhere to be found. Harrison asked team captain Jack Howard to call all the players to a meeting at 3:30 PM and then decided to ring the American Embassy in Tokyo. He quickly explained the situation. Was there any problem with the American team entering China? “Just go,” came the immediate answer. The answer was delivered, Harrison remembered, in an “ ‘everybody-goes-to-China’ sort of tone.” Harrison was confused. It seemed a preposterously curt response to what he was beginning to understand was a momentous question.
Still puzzled, Harrison made his way over to the stadium, where the American team was gathering. As the meeting got under way, Steenhoven finally walked in. He had been out shopping with his wife, or, as Steenhoven would later put it, tied up with administrative matters. The biggest moment of Ping-Pong history had almost passed by without him. For a moment “he was livid,” feeling thoroughly slighted that the Chinese hadn’t approached him directly—he was the head of the delegation. He even contemplated declining the invitation.
Once Steenhoven had settled down, the conversation continued. Should they go? “We knew there were some rather horrible people in the Middle Kingdom,” said Harrison. They had no idea if they would be safe, be kidnapped, be humiliated by Red Guards, be used as propaganda puppets. The USTTA was an organization without any knowledge of China whatsoever.
How long should they go for? They settled on one week. There were those who believed they’d be fired from their jobs if they stayed away any longer, those who missed wives or boyfriends too much, those scared to stay longer. Ultimately, only two felt they couldn’t go at all, including America’s number one, D. J. Lee, who had been born near Seoul and “regarded Beijing as being responsible for the Korean War” and his family’s suffering.
By now the press had become aware of the invitation. This strangely representative group of Americans was suddenly in the vanguard of international politics. As the meeting drew to a close, the first thing Steenhoven had to make sure of was that it wouldn’t be against State Department policy for them to enter China. What if they were portrayed as pariahs on their return? What if they never returned? Besides, how could Harrison feel so sure about the legality of their entry? Did he even know whom he’d talked to in the embassy in Tokyo? What on earth was going on here?
CHAPTER 39 | Surprise
Two hundred miles to the east of Nagoya, in the Japanese capital of Tokyo, the China specialist in the US Embassy Political Section, Bill Cunningham, received a phone call. It was the press attaché from the United States Information Service (USIS), explaining that the Italian Press Agency was leading with a story that an American table tennis team had just been invited to China. What was their official line? If it was true, continued the press attaché, it was going to “be the story of the year.” For Cunningham, it was the diplomatic equivalent of being handed a live grenade. Should he distance the United States government, persuade the team not to go, or embrace the moment and encourage contact, albeit through table tennis? Cunningham, like the press attaché on the other end of the line, sensed at once the potential commotion about to come his way. They would have to come up with an appropriate answer immediately. Anything less would not only embarrass the State Department but also make the Japanese nervous. Silence on so obvious an issue as China policy was not an option.
Cunningham’s usual day involved gleaning information on China and transmitting it back to Washington. By 1971, Cunningham felt that the United States “had developed a fairly good picture of what was going on” inside China. Back in Washington, dozens of translators read the output of the New China news agency. At the American consulate in Hong Kong, the People’s Daily was examined in mimeographed form. Anyone leaving China and heading through Hong Kong was intensively interviewed.
For all of the State Department’s efforts to keep an eye on the Communist Chinese, its knowledge was scant compared to an earlier generation of China watchers. Back in 1944, the United States had been open-minded enough to set up an observation base just outside the Communist enclave of Yan’an. The Dixie Mission, as it came to be known, had been one of the many unlikely unions of World War II.
Twelve Americans spent over a year living next to Mao and Zhou Enlai, aiding the fight against Japan, reporting on weather conditions for B-29 bombers passing over northern China, and, with the help of the Communists, establishing escape routes for downed pilots. They would go hunting with the Communists or head out together on reconnaissance behind Japanese lines. Sometimes they’d hold volleyball matches. Sometimes they’d play Ping-Pong together.
The Americans had the only generator in the whole of Yan’an. The men who would come to rule China could often be found over at the American caves when the Americans were screening films; the Chinese favored anything starring Ivor Montagu’s old friend Charlie Chaplin. Montagu had sent Chaplin a copy of The Jews Are Watching You, the German book that lay behind Chaplin’s decision to make The Great Dictator, the perfect film for Chinese Communists and American officials to watch together during their fight against Fascism.
American opinion of Communist intelligence in those key years had been high enough for one officer to recommend that the Dixie Mission be made permanent. On the other hand, opinion of Chiang Kai-shek was devastating. General David Barr, Chiang’s own chief military adviser, attributed the collapse of the Nationalist armies fighting against Mao’s force to “the world’s worst leadership . . . widespread corruption and dishonesty throughout the Armed Forces.” Or, in the words of General “Vinegar Joe” Stilwell, “We are allied to an ignorant, illiterate, peasant son of a bitch called Chiang Kai-shek.”
The beginning of the end of any lasting relationship between the Communist Chinese and America had come with the arrival of Ambassador Patrick Hurley, a man who believed he could negotiate with the Chinese because “they’re just like Mexicans and I can handle Mexicans.” He had called Mao Zedong “Moose Dung.” The Communists thought little of him. The Office of Strategic Services (OSS), precursor to the CIA, apparently didn’t think much of him either; his
code name was ALBATROSS.
Still, back in Washington, Hurley’s reports carried weight, as he stormed around making excuses for Chiang Kai-shek’s squandering of US aid. In November 1945 he wrote that “the weakness of the American foreign policy together with the Communist conspiracy within the Department are reasons for the evils that are abroad in the world today.” He reserved much of his hatred for the very best China watcher out in Yan’an, John Stewart Service. Service, fluent in Mandarin, not only had the ear of Mao and Zhou Enlai, but had been a school friend of Chen Yi’s in Sichuan. He was guilty of accurately reporting the current situation: the cohesion of the Communists and the utter incompetence of their Nationalist rivals.
In the anti-Communist hysteria that would soon grip America, Hurley’s evidence was wielded against Service and his colleagues by Senator Joe McCarthy, who was conducting a witch hunt against Communists he claimed were infiltrating US institutions. They were kept as far away from China as possible, “blown like dead leaves all over the earth” to posts as incongruous as Dusseldorf, Liverpool, and Bern, or, like Service, they were fired. Once they were gone, what was left was a “wasteland” that came to be known as “the China generation gap.” The mistreated were the Foreign Service officers who had presciently compiled a report on Vietnam in the mid-1940s declaring that the French, or anyone else who got themselves involved, would find that “guerilla warfare may continue indefinitely.”
Twenty years later, capable men like Bill Cunningham in the embassy in Tokyo were in charge of watching China; a country they had never been able to visit. It was, as one China scholar declared, closer to astrophysics than diplomacy.
Cunningham was attentive “any time the PRC gained a step forward in any organization.” This was the “termites in the basement” theory; without a close watch, an institution could be slowly rendered ineffective by Communist infiltration. By the end of 1970, the likelihood of the US mustering enough support to keep Taiwan in the UN and China out was waning. American diplomats not privy to Kissinger and Nixon’s intentions with China were closely monitoring the situation and working on damage control for what was beginning to seem an inevitability. A table tennis tournament, on the other hand, had been so obscure an entry point for a termite that it had passed under Cunningham’s radar.
The question of an American team entering China reminded Cunningham of a document he’d kept in the bottom of his desk. It was an annual report on foreign relations from the president to Congress—one of Kissinger’s innovations on Nixon’s behalf. A sentence had caught his eye that January, a single line buried in the four volumes. It stated that “the United States is open to educational, cultural and athletic exchanges with People’s Republic of China.” Cunningham’s career would rest on that one sentence. Despite the fact that the public face of Washington was still set against Communist China, Cunningham based his decision on these sixteen words. Cunningham, along with the rest of the State Department, had no idea about Kissinger’s and Nixon’s attempts to reach out to Mao and Zhou Enlai.
The USIS attaché who called with news of the US team’s invitation to China pressed Cunningham about what their response to the media should be. Both men knew instinctively that a deluge of calls would follow. “Tell them we know about it,” said Cunningham, “and that if they decide to go it will not be against United States policy.” Minutes later, the embassy’s public affairs officer, Alan Carter, called Cunningham. “Don’t you think you’ve gone awfully far?” he asked. Cunningham paused. “You better go see the ambassador” advised Carter.
What had Cunningham just done? Was a team representing the United States necessarily political? A Chinese team would certainly consider itself political. Cunningham read the sentence again and again and went to get a grudging approval from the ambassador.
His next call was from the deputy director of China Affairs at Japan’s Foreign Ministry. What was the United States government doing? Was it behind this development? Cunningham assured the official that the table tennis team in Nagoya was a private group. “Who’s the leader?” pressed the official.
“I haven’t the slightest idea,” replied Cunningham.
CHAPTER 40 | Decisions to Be Made
At 6:30 that evening, as he was clearing off his desk, Cunningham received a piece of paper with Steenhoven’s name and phone number. When Cunningham dialed Nagoya, the first words out of Steenhoven’s mouth were “Thank God you’ve called.” He was due to meet with the Chinese in under an hour and explained that he was “barricaded in his hotel room” in order to make a final decision while, in their eagerness, the team outside “was pounding down his door” in their desire to go. Was that really okay with the United States government?
Cunningham calmly read him the vital sentence from the annual report on foreign relations. “You’re saying that we should go,” said Steenhoven.
“No, I am not saying that you should go,” explained Cunningham carefully. “The US government is not going to tell you what to do about this. What I am saying is that the US government has said that we are open to athletic exchanges with the People’s Republic of China.”
Steenhoven paused for a moment and then rebuilt his question. “Okay. It won’t be against US policy if we go?”
“No,” said Cunningham, “it will not.”
For all of Zhou Enlai’s wrangling to reach this moment, had Cunningham been less adept or more cautious, the opportunity would have passed.
In Nagoya, the final meeting to hammer out the details took place in a windowless room beneath the stadium as the finals were played above them. Song Zhong awaited them. What would they like to see in China? What would they prefer to eat? While the Chinese had such a good grasp on negotiation, with a marshaled bureaucratic hierarchy of ten thousand heads, they were unaware that Steenhoven had no right to control the movement of his own group. At that stage, Steenhoven knew that the only thing he had control of was the team’s passports.
There was no time to prepare; very little time even to panic. The Chinese invitation meant that the Americans were due to fly in thirty-six hours. Some players began to write their wills. Tim Boggan admitted, “We were all nincompoops; none of us knew what we were doing. None of us was a China watcher. Nobody knew from shit what we were doing.” USTTA president Steenhoven later summed up his own knowledge about China before the trip as pigtails, satin pajamas, and pirate junks. Most of the team still clung to the belief that the Ping-Pong invitation was about Ping-Pong. Why not? They were Ping-Pong players invited to play against the world’s best players in the world’s biggest Ping-Pong stadium. Would Little Leaguers refuse a chance to play against Joe DiMaggio in Yankee Stadium? Few were thinking of the media; as Ping-Pong players, they were used to the absence of media coverage.
For international travel, the Chinese team had always been run by the Protocol Office of China’s Foreign Ministry. The American team was barely run at all, something Steenhoven was very much aware of. They were typical in the very best ways of 1971 America. They were racially and sexually diverse; they were students and chemical engineers, professors and file clerks. What could possibly go wrong?
By the end of his call with Steenhoven, Cunningham had decided to invite the American table tennis officials to Tokyo so they could meet face-to-face. The pretext was that the US Embassy would need to validate the team’s passports, even though that would normally be done at the consulate.
The following day, April 9, Harrison and Steenhoven shot from Nagoya to Tokyo by fast train, taking a quick breakfast of beer and seaweed on board. They wandered into the US Embassy, and the team’s passports were sent down the hill to the consulate. Steenhoven entered Cunningham’s office in a blue suit with an American flag on his lapel, eager to please. “He looked like everyone’s grandpa,” noted Cunningham, “perfect for the American public.” He’d have been a lot more alarmed, thought Harrison, had he seen Glenn Cowan.
Back in Washington, Kissinger’s staff was trying to figure out who on eart
h was about to enter China. Herbert Levin, a friend of Cunningham’s from the Tokyo Embassy now working under Kissinger, remembered that they “had to find out who were these fellows? I mean, were there warrants for their arrest outstanding, some child molesters . . . who were these guys?”
Cunningham gave Steenhoven and Harrison some advice. The Cultural Revolution was ongoing. They were about to enter a puritanical society, so they needed to act accordingly. “Never call a Chinese a Chinaman,” remembered Harrison from the pep talk. “The second was, never touch a woman. He gave an example of a Russian diplomat who had groped a Chinese elevator operator and was arrested.” That gave Harrison pause. On a previous trip with Cowan, he’d watched amazed as the young Californian had sat down next to a foreign airport official and draped “his arm around her shoulder, and his hand was on one breast.”
Steenhoven’s first worry was that the team “would be attacked by the Chinese,” a fear that Cunningham believed totally unfounded. Steenhoven also worried about gifts. They knew the Chinese would present them with mementos in Beijing and Shanghai, but they didn’t want to give the Chinese Japanese gifts in return. The present had to be made in America. Cunningham believed there were three acceptable gifts in Beijing in 1971, wristwatches, transistor radios, and ballpoint pens that “could fit nicely into the outside pocket of a Mao suit.” He immediately sent a Japanese colleague out to all the army post exchanges within reasonable distance to purchase American-made goods.
The team’s passports were returned. To all three men’s surprise, there was no official stamp on any of them. Down in the consulate, someone had simply drawn a black marker over the line that said “not valid for travel into or through mainland China.” There was no official etiquette for what was happening.
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