The Significance of Sports in Sino-American Relations: A Shared History Approach

It is well-known that Ping-Pong Diplomacy between Mao Zedong and Richard Nixon in the early 1970s broke deep hostilities and established better relations between People’s Republic of China and US. Yet it is not well known that sports not only shaped the respective national developments of China and US, but more importantly, they played an important role in establishing a shared history of Sino-American relations from the 1870s to the present. This paper aims to study this long ignored yet important topic. It will devote to the question of how sports became an effective vehicle to bring Chinese and Americans together diplomatically, culturally, and socially. This paper tries to connect Chinese and American history and their bilateral relations through sports. By using sports as effective lens, it will demonstrate the deep-rooted shared convictions, journeys, visions between Chinese and Americans as well as their major differences and conflicts. It will show a new way to study Chinese and American history by focusing on sports and demonstrate a new approach in understanding US-China relations.

The existing scholarship on US-China relations often emphasizes the U.S. leading role in defining the bilateral relations and China playing a passive as the respondent. Through the sports perspective, however, we see a mutually dynamic and shared visions and determination in promoting their bilateral relations. Besides the Ping pong diplomacy, the U.S and China’s extremely powerful cooperation in boycotting the 1980 Moscow Olympic Games was another example. The American enthusiastic embrace of China in the 1932 and 1984 Olympic Games also showed how sports provided a powerful engine for both sides to exercise their “push and pull.” Despite their many differences, conflicts, and confrontations between China and the US, sports have often provided a glue to bring them together when other forces might push them apart.