'Sports can open up doors': How Winter Olympic Games could improve U.S.-China ties

BEIJING – In 1971 at the World Table Tennis Championship in Nagoya, Japan, a butterfly flapped its wings, then nine Americans parted China's Communist Red Curtain.

That butterfly was Glenn Cowan.

The New York-born table tennis player missed the team bus to the Nagoya venue. So he hitched a ride on the Chinese one, where he was approached by three-time world men's singles champion Zhuang Zedong. Zedong shook Cowan's hand and gave him a silk cloth with a depiction of China's scenic Huangshan Mountains. Two days later, China's leader Mao Zedong – Chairman Mao – invited the entire American team to visit China.

President Nixon touched down in Beijing ten months later, ending 25 years of U.S. and Chinese diplomatic isolation (and lending evidence to chaos theory: that minor, random events – butterflies like Cowan's missed bus – can have profound impacts).

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As the 2022 Winter Olympics kick off in Beijing Friday with the opening ceremony, the decades-old episode speaks to the potential healing power – even if fleeting – athletic competition can serve up in times of conflict.

"Sports can open up doors and open up communication," said Connie Sweeris, 74, one of the members of the 1971 U.S. table tennis team who travelled to China following Cowan's encounter with Zhuang. Cowan died in 2004, Zhuang in 2013.

Sweeris was the reigning U.S. national champion at the time of the trip, which took place during the height of China's Cultural Revolution. She was pictured shaking hands with Zhou Enlai, the first premier of the People's Republic of China, and also appeared on the cover of TIME magazine's April 26, 197 issue titled "China: A Whole New Game" alongside other U.S. players at China's Great Wall. At an exhibition match in Beijing, Sweeris played in front of 20,000 Chinese table tennis fans. She was part of the first American group to visit the Chinese mainland since the mid-1950s.

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"What's amazing about the whole episode is that by the time the Chinese team paid a return visit to the U.S. the following year, the United Nations had already voted to admit China," said Sweeris' husband, Dell, 76, who like his wife is a table tennis hall of famer. He had not been able to get time off from his day job to travel to China. (The Republic of China was a founding member of the UN in 1945. However, in 1949, it was kept out of the organization after the Communist Party founded the People’s Republic of China.)

Today, with U.S.-China relations at a low point over thorny issues such as cybersecurity, trade, Taiwan and human rights, few close observers expect sports and politics to collide constructively as China hosts the Winter Olympic Games through Feb. 20.

In China, Wang Yiwei, a professor of international relations at Renmin University, said there was hope among China's political elite that a second, serendipitous round of so-called Ping-Pong Diplomacy (as the 1971 episode came to be known) could pave the way for a foreign relations breakthrough. But the widespread belief is that it won't.

"The U.S. has labelled China a strategic competitor. It is very difficult to turn that tide around. And President Biden's (China) policies are hamstrung by U.S. domestic politics," Wang said. "Even the issue of climate change has not been able to unite the two nations to offset such strategic competition. How can we expect sports alone to do this?"

Liu Weidong, the deputy director of the Institute of American studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said that for sports diplomacy to play a role in improving relations it requires both sides to have the political will to meet each other halfway.

"China and the U.S. have different ideas on how to change the status quo, and each believes the other should make changes first," he said.

Long and winding rocky road

The U.S.-China relationship has been on a downward spiral since the tale end of President Obama's tenure. He initially sought to accommodate China's rising economic and military clout by working together on global issues such as climate change and North Korea's nuclear weapons ambitions but his administration grew frustrated as China refused to halt controversial land reclamation efforts in the South China Sea.

The relation deteriorated further under the Trump administration as Washington placed tariffs on a range of Chinese goods and blacklisted some Chinese firms over fears they could be attempting to steal U.S. technology secrets. President Trump further angered Beijing by strengthening U.S. military and political ties to Taiwan, a self-ruled island territory that China claims as its own and has vowed to make part of China again. Beijing and Washington grew farther apart over the coronavirus epidemic after the U.S. accused China of withholding information on the virus' origins.

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The relationship has continued to be abrasive under President Joe Biden, who has sanctioned Chinese officials for alleged human rights abuses.

The Biden administration has opted not to send an official U.S. delegation to the Games as a statement against China's "ongoing genocide and crimes against humanity in Xinjiang and other human rights abuses." White House press secretary Jen Psaki said recently. The U.S., Canada, France and other western nations claim China has systematically engaged in mass detentions, forced abortions and forced assimilation of Xinjiang's Uyghurs, a predominantly Muslim ethnic minority.

China has repeatedly rejected the genocide allegations as slander and a fabrication of Western researchers and biased foreign media outlets. It views Uyghurs as a threat in part because some have sought greater autonomy or even a separate state. Chinese government officials allege there are extremists within the Uyghur community and say a campaign to "re-educate" the Uyghurs is justified by terrorism concerns. Beijing has not released evidence to bolster its assertion that the allegations against it are false.

U.S. athletes are still permitted to compete in the Olympics. The same policy applies for the Paralympic Games, which are also taking place in Beijing. The State Department is providing consular and diplomatic security services for athletes, coaches, trainers and staff. The last time U.S. officials fully boycotted the Games with athletes sitting out the competition was in 1980 when President Carter held office. The U.S. led a boycott of the Games in Moscow to protest the 1979 Soviet Union invasion of Afghanistan.

Sports ability to bring nations together is limited

The British journalist, essayist and novelist George Orwell famously described international sports contests as "war minus the shooting." A chance for countries to exert dominance and reinforce the stories they tell about themselves.

What's clear is that sports as a tool to improve fraught relations and accelerate diplomatic momentum typically works in mysterious and unpredictable ways.

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It's long been rumored, though some historians dismiss it as myth, that an impromptu soccer match between British and German soldiers in the trenches of no man's land on Christmas Eve 1914 represents the unrivaled potential for sports to unite the divided.

In 2000, then-U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright brought North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il an NBA basketball autographed by Michael Jordan as a goodwill gift. Albright had heard that the country's reclusive leader was a die-hard basketball faninstalled regulation-size basketball courts at all his palaces.

When China hosted the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing was it supposed to be an opportunity for the country to showcase its entrance on the world stage.

Yet for all its allure as a concept sports diplomacy has a decidedly mixed record.

Setting aside whether or not the World War I so-called Christmas Truce ever happened, it was not observed anywhere else along the Western Front and after a brief pause hostilities quickly resumed. Albright's presentation of the Jordan-signed basketball may have flattered Kim but it did not lead to a breakthrough on curbing North Korea's missile development or nuclear weapons program. Nor did efforts by the pierced and tattooed former NBA star Dennis Rodman when he showed up in Pyongyang a decade-and-half later for a series of visits with Kim's successor, his son Kim Jong Un, also a self-professed basketball fan. Rodman called his mission "basketball diplomacy."

Instead of highlighting China's global ascendency, the 2008 Games, critics said, showcased the country's human rights violations, forced evictions and censorship.

Similarly, despite repeated attempts over the years by cricket-loving India and Pakistan to use that sports as a basis for "cricket diplomacy" relations between the two sides remain as fraught as ever over the disputed Kashmir border. And while Iran may have continued to welcome U.S. wrestlers to its territory even after President Trump’s travel ban against Iranian nationals in 2017, several dozen wrestling team exchanges between the two nations stretching back multiple decades have failed to break an impasse over Iran's nuclear activities despite the encouraging people-to-people diplomacy.

At the 2018 Winter Olympics in South Korea, there was a pause in heightened inter-Korean tensions as both North and South Korea saw an opportunity for diplomatic dialogue despite their differences over Pyongyang's nuclear and missile programs.

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It didn't last.

The two Koreas resumed on-again-off-again communications but in recent months North Korea has ratcheted up tensions by testing what it says are hypersonic missiles.

Jonathan Grix, a professor of sports policy at Manchester Metropolitan University, in England, said sports "reflect universal values that are also relatively neutral," which is why they can be useful to "unlock previously stalled relations" and bridge divides.

Economic matters trump sports

But other factors are typically more important.

"If you take a longer term view sports diplomacy usually gets trumped by economic and financial matters," said Grix, who noted that while a sports event can be a "spark" that gets a diplomatic "foot in the door," it's the diplomats and politicians who are in charge.

Grix added that sports diplomacy is also a cautionary tale because increasingly some countries use it as a framework to "sports wash" troubling domestic issues.

He said that in the Middle East countries with poor human rights records such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates have sought to burnish their credentials and project power, influence and competence by hosting large international events such as Formula One racing and, in Qatar's case, the upcoming 2022 soccer World Cup.

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"There's an evangelical side to this debate that says sports can cure everything but it's hard to find evidence that, say, letting a few Palestinian kids play soccer with Israelis really makes any difference" to settling that long-simmering dispute, Grix said.

(The State Department's website boasts that its Sports Diplomacy Division was "established in the wake of 9/11 as a means of reaching out to youth in the Middle East through soccer." There's few indications it has led to improved U.S. relations with the region. In the run-up to the Beijing Games, the unit declined to answer any questions about what, if anything, State Department officials were doing to look for opportunities to meaningfully reignite stalled U.S.-China diplomacy through the medium of sports.)

Wrong bus was the right move

Back in Beijing, Huiyao Wang, a senior adviser to China's government, told USA TODAY in a phone interview that the Games this time around were a good occasion to look for opportunities to "warm up relations" between the U.S. and China.

"With so many athletes competing in so many different categories we Chinese will be pleased to see American champions and I hope Americans will be happy for any Chinese ones, too." Huiyao said. "This event will be a plus for both sides."

For Connie Sweeris, the 50th anniversary of her trip to China came and went last year with relatively little fanfare because of COVID-19. When the State Department called asking if it could exhibit some of her memorabilia connected to the visit, she sent items along but has not otherwise had any contact with U.S. officials and diplomats. She' tried to keep in touch with some of the Chinese players from that time but distances and deaths and now the pandemic have made it more difficult.

"Being part of that trip to China was kind of the ultimate for me, because it's a legacy that I have been able to pass down to my children and grandchildren. It was a wonderful experience and for a moment in time, I can say that I made history," she said.

"Years later I've started to wonder if the Chinese were planning all along to ask us to come visit and then Glenn just made it easy for them by getting on the wrong bus."

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 2022 Winter Olympic Games: Can sports help improve U.S.-China ties?