Thirty years ago, when China was still closed off to most of the world, Chairman Mao Zedong invited a group of American table-tennis players to participate in a week of friendly exhibition matches around the country. Insular and impoverished, China was just emerging from the most chaotic years of the Cultural Revolution. Although he was largely responsible for creating this predicament, Mao saw that sports could help gently pull China out of its isolation.
Ping-pong diplomacy, as it was dubbed, paved the way for President Richard Nixon's trip to China in 1972 — and for the thaw in relations between the two countries. In those days, the Chinese plastered sporting exhibitions with red banners bearing the slogan: "Friendship First, Competition Second."
No such banners were hanging from the rafters at Beijing's Olympic basketball stadium on the night of Aug. 18, when the Georgetown Hoyas tipped off against the Bayi Rockets, the Chinese army team. It was supposed to be a goodwill game, a diplomatic give-and-go. The Hoyas' tour, timed to coincide with a visit by U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, was meant to be a sporting diversion to the tensions between the world's biggest economies. A State Department official had even urged the Hoyas to see themselves as cultural ambassadors, heirs to the ping-pong diplomats. Nobody would blame the college players for believing at the opening tip that the evening would end much like the prior evening's game: with hugs and warm feelings of cross-cultural camaraderie for their Chinese counterparts.