Ping-Pong Diplomacy

Nicholas Griffin

In Ping-Pong Diplomacy (2014), journalist and novelist Nicholas Griffin traces the surprising political history of table tennis. The story begins with Ivor Montagu, a British aristocrat who helped found the International Table Tennis Federation in 1926 and later worked for Soviet intelligence. It follows how Mao's China turned the sport into a symbol of national pride, how star players suffered during the Cultural Revolution, and how, in 1971, a chance encounter between American player Glenn Cowan and Chinese champion Zhuang Zedong helped open the door to a thaw between China and the United States.