Adventures of the Ping-Pong Diplomats: Volume 1: the U.S.-China Friendship Matches Change World History

By Fred Danner

This story reads like an adventure novel. The only difference is that the events in a novel are made up; these adventures really happened; the people are real; and the political effects of their actions have produced 40 years of peaceful coexistence between the Peoples Republic of China and the United States.

This is the only historically complete narrative which covers the actual ping-pong diplomacy events, provides the background foreign policy information to explain why these events happened, & shows what could have happened if there were no ping-pong diplomats.

The world news media was prevented from general coverage of the U.S. World Table Tennis Team to China, while U.S. publicity about the return visit of the Chinese World Team to the U.S. on the Grand Tour was largely controlled to serve the political aims and objectives of the Nixon administration.

For those average Americans who became our Cold-War Warriors willingly taking the risks involved, and those who worked behind the scenes to make their risks worthwhile; such experiences occur only once in a lifetime. America and the world are a lot better off because of their efforts.

Its time to read the real story of ping-pong diplomacy!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jan 17, 2012
• ISBN: 9781465392305

Fred Danner

Fred Danner – the author of this book was Director of Junior Development for the U.S. Table Tennis Association and is a certified coach & umpire. He has represented the United States as Captain of the U.S, Womens International Team in matches with Canada; was the Team Leader for the first table tennis Pan American Games in 1979, and became the first table tennis Delegate for North America serving on the Executive Board of the United States Olympic Committee. His book “The National School Table Tennis Guide” was used to teach courses in 6 universities & distributed to physical education instructors throughout the U.S. Later, as a Vice-President of the USTTA, he negotiated with the Peoples Republic of China to bring China and the sport of Table Tennis into the 1988 Summer Olympic Games. His work to establish the National Jr. and National Table Tennis Foundations has helped to fund many Association programs. In 1993 he was inducted into the U.S. Table Tennis Hall of Fame and in 2010 he received the Mark Matthews Lifetime Table Tennis Award as an administrator. His longtime goal for table tennis is to introduce it into the education curricula of our national school systems.

Book preview

Adventures of the

PING-PONG

DIPLOMATS

Volume 1:

The U.S.-China Friendship Matches Change World History

Fred Danner

Copyright © 2012 by Fred Danner.

Library of Congress Control Number:       2011960665

ISBN:         Hardcover                               978-1-4653-9229-9

                   Softcover                                 978-1-4653-9228-2

                   Ebook                                      978-1-4653-9230-5

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Suggested Categories for Listings

1 –    Ping-Pong Diplomacy

2 –    U.S./China Relations—years 1941-1972

3 –    APOLLO 11 Moon Landing

4 –    World Peace

5 –    Vietnam Conflict

6 –    Korean War

7 –    Aerospace Politics

8 –    Table Tennis

9 –    Richard M. Nixon

10 – Mao Tse-tung

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris Corporation

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

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103933

Contents

Acknowledgments

Spelling of Some Chinese Names

Foreword

Introduction

References—Introduction

Part 1

Chapter 1

References—Chapter 1

Chapter 2

References—Chapter 2

Chapter 3

References—Chapter 3

Part 2

Chapter 4

References—Chapter 4

Chapter 5

References—Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

References—Chapter 7

To all those who contributed to the U.S.-China friendship matches leading to over forty years of peaceful cooperation between the People’s Republic of China and the United States.

Blessed are the peacemakers for they

shall be called children of God!

—Matthew 5:9

May the efforts of our small

organization lead to a better

understanding between nations and a

world where our grandchildren may

live in peace!

—Fred Danner

To my parents, who pointed me straight.

To my first wife, Mary Anne, my first love, who got me through some difficult times but whose life ended too soon.

To my children, Joanne and Carl, who are lights of my life and who helped with the book and in many other ways.

God bless you all!

Acknowledgments

I would be remiss if I did not mention the many people and institutions that made direct and/or indirect contributions to this book. Most important was the work of Tim Boggan, who wrote the only complete detailed account of the American experience when the U.S. team visited China and when the Chinese team came on the grand tour to visit the United States. This account covers the history of this Ping-Pong Diplomacy (PPD) with the what and with how the United States team members reacted and survived the high stresses associated with their participation in these events.

This book differs from Tim’s volume 5 of his History of U.S. Table Tennis because it addresses other questions like Did Ping-Pong Diplomacy really change world history? Why did it happen? and How did U.S. politicians and State Department officials react when they found out it was happening? Who should be credited with the positive effects of PPD?

To write volume 1 of this series, it was necessary to research many public documents in several libraries including the National Archives in Washington, DC. Thousands of articles and personal correspondence received over twenty-two years of working with the United States Table Tennis Association (USTTA) were reviewed. These helped to pinpoint the exact times and dates of events covered in the text. After a framework for presenting this material was established, the process of contacting key people began.

My thanks goes to Janis Berris and Doug Murray of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations for helping with the details of the 1972 Grand Tour and for contacts to others who had direct experience with the Ping-Pong Diplomacy events. Thanks also to Bill Cunningham, the senior U.S. State Department official, who while in Tokyo, Japan, did a superb job helping to transform the tentative Chinese invitation to the U.S. team into their historic real visit to China. His role in this endeavor is duly noted in chapter 2 of the story.

Thanks to J. Rufford Harrison, the USTTA official who received the Chinese invitation while in Japan and who was the organizer and key leader at the U.S. team meeting where they decided to go to China. He was a big help in reviewing and sorting out a proper direction for this writing and for important comments and insights about his role in the events.

If any book on table tennis needs photos to make it very readable, there is one place to look. A big thank-you goes to Mal Anderson, the Matthew Brady of USTTA photographers. His personal library of over fifty thousand photos of table tennis action and of the people in our sport has been made available to me and many others without charge. It is his contribution to U.S. table tennis promotion.

When the hours of writing the story got long and tough, I really appreciated the encouragement I received from Dr. Eddie Lee, a professor of history at Winthrop University in South Carolina, and from Dean Johnson, the tournament director for the 2011 U.S. Open Championships held in Virginia Beach, Virginia. Their words of encouragement made my effort seem worthwhile.

Long before any formal work was started on the text of the book, I had the privilege of interviewing Glenn Cowan and discussing the details of the famous incident where he got on the wrong bus in Japan. He’s no longer with us, but I thank him for his inputs to the story.

Others who contributed to the book include Tybie Sommers, the sister of Leah Neuberger, who went with the Canadian team to China, and Sol Schiff, who publicly complained in 1962 about the missed opportunity in 1960 for normalizing relations with the PRC. This opened a new door for our research and investigation.

Finally, thanks to Dave Cox, 1972 U.S. Open tournament director; Larry Hodges, who helped to provide some of the photos; Bob Kaminsky, who gave me details about the Maryland grand tour appearance; Gus Kennedy, the team leader for our second China visit in 1979; and Bob McGrath, college classmate who changed my thoughts on how best to present the book.

The Grumman Aircraft Engineering Corporation (later called Grumman Aerospace Corporation) should be commended for its outstanding contributions to their corporate table tennis program. They were directly responsible for starting the rebirth of table tennis on Long Island when different employees formed the West Babylon Suffolk Table Tennis League in 1959, started the Huntington Table Tennis Club in 1960, and started the East Islip Table Tennis Club in 1961. On the Apollo 11’s first trip to the moon, Grumman produced the vehicle (LM) that transported and successfully landed our U.S. astronauts.

When North America’s Apollo 13 command module exploded in space, it was the Grumman LM that saved the astronauts on board and towed the damaged command module over two million miles in space back to a safe landing on Earth. Thanks to all the Grumman workers who contributed to make both our Long Island table tennis and our national space programs outstanding achievements.

Spelling of Some Chinese Names

The events described in the book happened during the 1941 through 1972 time period. To avoid confusion for the reader, the spelling of selected Chinese names and places will be used appropriate for the era, Below are some of the names showing how they are used and some alternate spellings characteristics of more recent publications on China.

Foreword

Fred Danner, recent recipients of the US Table Tennis Hall of Fame’s Mark Mathews’ Lifetime Achievement Award, begins this first of his projected three volumes by giving us a decades-long United States vs. China trail to follow. Why? Because there’s nothing like a background of post-World War II wars involving China, Taiwan, Japan, Russia, Koreas, the Vietnams; as well as the political naïveté and machinations of world and US leaders––Mao Tse-tung, Chiang Kai-shek, Stalin, Ho Chi Minh, Ngo Dinh Diem, Kim Il-Sung, Syngman Rhee, Roosevelt, Churchill, Truman, MacArthur, McNamara, and John Foster Dulles––to make a point. Which in this diplomacy book is to patiently emphasize how mind-boggling and historic a sudden shake––handshake––between conflicting parties can be. Peace––one hardly knows if it’s possible, let alone when to expect it. But Fred’s opening chapter leads specifically to the unexpected (and unprepared for?) meeting of the People’s Republic of China’s Chuang Tse-tung (Zhuang Zedong) and the United States’ Glenn Cowan at the 1971 World Table Tennis Championships in Nagoya, Japan.

Fred relates the generally accepted story of how, contrary to Mao’s directive that the Chinese team members weren’t to have any personal interactions with the Americans, Chuang, reportedly to the disapproval of some of his teammates, all friendly-like presented Glenn with a gift. Later, as Fred says, Chuang defended this gesture of friendship by saying that Chairman Mao told us we should differentiate between American policy makers and the common people. Next day, Glenn presented Chuang with a reciprocal gift and photographers made the most of the public exchange (I myself featured this exchange photo on the cover of my own China book). And as Fred tells us, it wasn’t only the photographers that made the most of his Chuang/Cowan encounter, so did Mao himself. For it’s said that when he saw the photo of the Chinese and American smiling together, it suddenly made him change his mind in the last minute and straightaway invite the Americans to China. Thus, Ping-Pong Diplomacy was born.

This story––from which everything related to Ping-Pong Diplomacy has followed––has been of special interest to me ever since Glenn personally told me that when he’d come out of his practice hall he’d looked in vain for a ride, but that then a Chinese had motioned him to come aboard their ultra-private bus. Who was this man who’d signaled him so? It wasn’t Chuang, for Glenn, knowing what he looked like, would have indicated that to me. How, considering the repercussions that were sure to follow when Glenn got off that exclusively private bus, did this Chinese have the authority to extend an invitation to him, especially when Chuang himself would reportedly be criticized by some for fraternizing with the American? Was this mystery man really more in charge than Chuang? Moreover, at least some on the bus weren’t at all wary of Glenn, for he told me some were smiling, even laughing at his highly individualized presence––hair, clothes, outspokenness. Certainly these Chinese weren’t uptight at his being there. All of which makes me question just how true Chuang’s heroics were––and that leads to where others more or less in the know might or might not want to go.

Anyway, in table tennis politics, which is world politics, one is in need of more clarifying books like Fred’s (fortunately volumes II and III detailing Fred’s adventures with the Chinese leading to the entry of table tennis into the Olympic Games are in the offing). One thing is clear though: it sure can’t be a surprise to any reader that Ping-Pong Diplomacy is fraught with suspicions, twists, and turns that, though it will take time, need Nixon/Kissinger and Mao/Chou En-lai sorting out.

In his opening chapter, Fred had moved through United States-China-Russia relations to the point where, via American journalist Edgar Snow––call him a diplomat too––Chou En-lai (Zhou Enlai) had acknowledged that by 1960, he more favored friendship with the United States than with Russia. Thus Fred argues that a big U.S. foreign policy mistake was not recommending that our US team accept an invitation to attend the 1961 Peking World Table Tennis Championships. Had the team somehow been able to raise the money to go and not been detained from going that might have precipitated Ping-Pong Diplomacy a decade earlier, for Chou En-lai definitely wanted to bring the two countries together. In fact, after Fred in chapter 2 had given us a summary of how the US Department of State agreed to view favorably this 1971 Ping-Pong trip to China and how the US team itself fared in this strange new country of old China (as I well know not without problems), Fred would come round in chapter 3 to the question of who might be deserving of a Nobel Peace Prize––and proposed for serious consideration not Mao or Nixon, but Chou En-lai.

Fred says he lacks diplomatic skills. But don’t you believe him. In chapters 4 and 5, I see how he not only comes to hone his own skills but makes budding diplomats of those he works with. By necessity, he’s a team player, but it’s his individuality that makes him a leader. In moving toward his discussion of phase 2 of Ping-Pong Diplomacy, the reciprocal visit of the Chinese to the United States in 1972, Fred gives us a thorough history of Long Island table tennis and how with his organizational help it grew and prospered. His first experience at seeing where the best of the Island players congregated was to go down dark steps into somebody’s basement. This, as it turned out, was where the 1957 Long Island Closed would be held––125 entries playing on only three cramped tables. After Fred’s first match, he didn’t play again for seven and a half hours. Clearly, much organizational work had to be done, people convincingly spoken to.

Ah, progress. By 1960, the Long Island Championships were played at the Roosevelt Field Shopping Center in a large conference room. Afterwards, a Huntington League was formed that would thrive. And then, with Fred as president of the Long Island Table Tennis Association, the annual Closed Championships were played at an acceptable facility, the Walt Whitman High School gym. After a dozen years of persistent but sometimes discouraging hard work––no one has written more comprehensively on the operations of tournaments, on experiencing unforeseen problems, seeing playing schedules go awry, made-up matches frantically having to be played at a much too late hour, than Fred––finally, finally, there was much table tennis progress.

How diplomatic––in this instance straightforward––he was at a LITTA Executive Committee Meeting when everyone was all smiles at the ‘great job’ we’d just done in running a tournament. Everyone that is, but Fred: I pulled out a four-page itemized list of things we did wrong and read it line-by-line to the committee. I said we took a hell of a risk to try to run this Open without raising the capability and performance level of our operating people. We should not run another Open until we can correct the things wrong I’ve just read! Harsh words to those who’ve joined him out of a labor of love––but for a leader, very effective ones. For Fred knew what he was doing and what he wanted others to do. After he’d skillfully recruited more qualified people willing to work with him in furthering Long Island tournament operations, he and his coworkers would successfully take on the job of ––whew!––running the 1972 US Open with 725 players competing in over 2,300 matches in 46 different events. It took a while for Fred and friends to succeed, but table tennis had come out of the darkness into the light.

Obviously, a diplomat is not merely concerned with appeasement; he often has to be bold, show toughness, perhaps even anger. In a sense, Fred’s everyday work life––the conflicts he’s involved in at his place of employment––mirror the ones he’s aware of in the world at large. Many of his daily preoccupation are little tests of war––they revolve around his organizational skills and his need to make the right survival choices. Some of his coworkers literally could not take what befell them––the disappointments, the injustices that Fred also abhorred and sometimes dramatically protested.

For example, as he advanced at Long Island’s Grumman Aircraft Engineering Corporation, Fred was assigned to lead an advanced development program to establish a microelectronics laboratory, but the necessary AD funds were not being approved and not for any good reason. So what did Fred do? He rose to the occasion––went into the AD office, and after about 15 minutes of [very uncharacteristic] vile language stomped out threatening to take the AD man up to the vice president’s office if he didn’t get up off his ass and get Fred the AD funds. The man did get Fred the funds––so in this case, it paid not to be Mr. Nice Guy.

Another time, at a crucial meeting, Fred looked at the speaker and said, Bullshit! and walked out. This is a diplomat? Well, in this context, yes, for bullshit is exactly what he was hearing––and it amounted to criminal fraud. Moreover, this show of natural human emotion serves the reader well, for it undercuts the necessarily technical in-group language Fred has to use to tell his evolving Grumman story.

The Grumman project that was so dear to Fred was his work on the LEM (moon) space vehicle. First, regarding the wiring. Then the altitude thrust rocket drive circuits––did they need a $100,000 redesign program? Nope, absolutely not––they were perfect. Then finally how to handle past failures on the rendezvous and landing radar for the LEM system––was a fix possible? After study, hooray for Fred––’cause he said, I’ll bet my life on the fix. So Grumman agreed to go ahead––with the result that We were on the moon!

Of course, besides his work at Grumman, Fred had a family life, and as to be expected, he and his wife Mary Anne were active with son Carl in his Cub Scout Pack. Fred became the organization and extension chair, and Mary Anne volunteered as a den mother. With a little diplomatic persuasion, the pack went from forty members to eighty-five. Then came Carl’s own interest in table tennis––and Fred’s coaching and encouragement until the two of them were going off to tournaments outside Long Island.

Chapter 7 moves us on to the March 1972 Long Island Open held at the Hofstra University Field house and to the many volunteers that the tournament brought forth––particularly tournament director Dave Cox and those who, along with Fred, helped him most in operations, Dr. Mitchell Silbert and Chris Schlotterhausen. The finest group of dedicated people I have ever worked with, said Fred. But oh, oh, a critical problem––some Saturday matches had unexpectedly taken too long to play, upsetting precise table time schedules. With the result that the organizers’ worst fears had been realized––the prime operations control system had broken down!

But talk about knowing what to do and how to get people to do it, Fred’s in the thick of the off-court action of which there’s plenty even after he’s helped to get the scheduling back to normal. Then, chaos conquered, a Chinese delegation came to watch the final matches, liked what they saw, and so did 3,300 other people.

Next up and the climax to Fred’s final chapter: China’s world team’s appearance on their reciprocal Ping-Pong Diplomacy visit to the United States. They’d begun their Grand Tour in Detroit and later had been formally met by President Nixon at the Rose Garden where, as Fred tells us, our attending U.S. team had not been so welcome. Only when cornered, as it were, begrudgingly, did President Nixon recognize some of our players. Oh, he said, practicing a sort of diplomacy, I didn’t know you were here––though of course, he’d walked right by us to greet the Chinese. However, as Fred diplomatically says, "In all fairness to President Nixon, we must realize the tremendous pressure he was under at this time. He had traveled to China in February 1972 to meet with Mao. This endeared him to all the ‘peaceniks’ but made his actions unacceptable to activists like Dr. Carl Mcintire at most of the planned stops. Slogans like ‘1, 2, 3, 4! We don’t want the floor–– ––ing war!’ were chanted [and ‘1, 2, 3, 4! We want to win the war!’ counterchanted] by demonstrators who picketed