Ping-Pong diplomatic offensive had its roots in Nagoya

BY TOMOYOSHI ISOGAWA

THE ASAHI SHIMBUN

For 27 years after the end of World War II, Japan and China remained hostile to each other on the Cold War front. But in 1972, they changed their respective diplomatic policies and normalized their relations. To learn the background to this, I went to Beijing to speak with witnesses to this turning point in history.

The historic decision to send a U.S. table tennis team to Beijing was The Asahi Shimbun's top story in its April 8, 1971, edition.

Wang Xiaoxian (LI JIANHUA)

Lin Liyun (LI JIANHUA)

I walked in sub-zero temperatures to the offices of the General Administration of Sport of China, located south of the heart of Beijing. There, I met Xu Yinsheng, a Ping-Pong star of the 1960s who is now president of the Chinese Table Tennis Association. In the conference room I was led to, various table tennis memorabilia, including the trophy of the 31st World Table Tennis Championships held in Nagoya in spring 1971, were on display.

It was during this Nagoya event at the Aichi Prefectural Gymnasium that the historic U.S.-China Ping-Pong diplomatic offensive was set in motion.

The eyes of the world were on Nagoya even before the championships began, as China was participating for the first time after a six-year absence because of the Cultural Revolution.

Xu was the coach of the Chinese team.

"I was told by Premier Chou En-lai that winning the championship was secondary to our main purpose of participation--friendship," he recalled. Amid heavy security, Xu played the role of Chinese goodwill ambassador.

Meantime, a different wheel began to turn in another part of the gymnasium. An official of the U.S.A. Table Tennis Association (now U.S.A. Table Tennis) asked a senior official of the Chinese team to the effect: "We understand that China is planning to invite the Canadian national team and others to Beijing after this event. Would you consider inviting the U.S. team as well?"

At the time, the United States was China's enemy in the Vietnam War. The Chinese official could not tell if the U.S. side was being serious, but he nevertheless conveyed the message to Beijing.

Chinese leader Mao Tse-tung had to make a decision. The Foreign Affairs Ministry advised Mao that the timing was still premature, and Mao agreed. But he kept thinking about it until the day before the U.S. team was scheduled to head home from Nagoya.

According to one anecdote, Mao had his supper, and then took his sleeping pills as usual to prepare for bed. But just before he settled in for the night, he decided he wanted to invite the U.S. team after all. Mao summoned the head of his nursing staff and told him to call the U.S. official at once. The head nurse, however, had always been told by Mao to ignore anything he said after he had taken his sleeping pills. So, the nurse just stood there and did nothing. Mao shouted at him, "Hurry up and call him before the team goes home!"

On April 7, news reports from Nagoya took the world by surprise. China was officially inviting the U.S. Ping-Pong team to play in China. Two days later, the U.S. team flew to Beijing via Hong Kong.

Henry Kissinger, national security adviser under President Richard Nixon, secretly visited Beijing three months later. And in February of the following year, Nixon made his historic trip to China.

"Nagoya was where China's detente with the United States as well as Japan was set in motion," said Xu.

Crises bring China, U.S. together

China-U.S. relations did not change overnight, however. The two countries gradually got over their mutual distrust because of shared interests.

What did China gain from its rapprochement with the United States? Qian Jiang, deputy editor in chief of the People's Daily Overseas Edition and author of a book on the Ping-Pong diplomacy as seen from the backstage, noted that China gained far more than expected from the rapprochement.

"The United States wanted badly to end the Vietnam War, and so did China," he said. "As for the Taiwan issue, it became clear to China that while there was no easy solution to the problem, at least the situation wasn't going to get any worse.

"The United States was afraid of the Soviet Union. This helped Mao make up his mind that China should cooperate with the United States to form a joint front against the Soviet Union."

China, too, was afraid of the Soviet Union at the time. The bilateral confrontation began deepening in the 1950s, and China braced itself for war with the Soviet Union in 1969 when an armed clash occurred on Zhenbao or Damanski Island in the Ussuri River on the Soviet border. Chinese citizens in border towns were evacuated inland, and air raid shelters were dug in Beijing and other cities. But it was not going to be easy to defend the long border. And down south, the Vietnam War was still raging.

"China was in the middle of the Cultural Revolution, and the economy was a mess," said Qian. "The financial burden of supporting North Vietnam over the long term was formidable. China wanted to get out of the war, but was having trouble finding the right timing for sounding out the United States."

China's wishes matched those of the Nixon administration, which was facing a swelling anti-war movement at home as the Vietnam War fell deeper into a quagmire. But how to reach out to each other? The Nagoya Ping-Pong event gave them the opening they needed.

Japan nudged closer to China

The China-U.S. rapprochement gave China and Japan the nudge they needed to restore their relationship. As an ally of the United States, Japan was shocked that the Nixon administration had kept Kissinger's China visit secret. The move to normalize Japan's diplomatic relations with China gained momentum after China joined the United Nations.

On July 6, 1972, newly elected Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka vowed to bring about early restoration of diplomatic relations with China.

Reading this in newspapers, Chou called a meeting of Foreign Affairs Ministry officials. Among them was Wang Xiaoxian, who was Chou's interpreter at the time. Now vice president of the China-Japan Friendship Association, Wang recalled that Chou asked everyone at the meeting how he should respond to Tanaka's overture.

"Everyone gave their opinions, including myself, but Chou wasn't impressed by any of them. He then wrote a memorandum of sorts and handed it to Chairman Mao."

On July 9, Chou voiced his thoughts in a speech during a reception to welcome a delegation from South Yemen. Referring to Tanaka's remarks, Chou said, "These remarks are to be welcomed." This galvanized Beijing and Tokyo into action.

Tanaka and Foreign Minister Masayoshi Ohira visited Beijing on Sept. 25. After heated exchanges on the issue of Japan's war reparations and the Taiwan issue, Japan and China signed a joint communique Sept. 29 for the normalization of their diplomatic relations.

This came about amid structural changes in international politics, but Wang stressed that normalization was made possible because the two countries had kept up nongovernmental exchanges over the previous two decades.

"Tokyo had gone along with Washington's China containment policy and refused to deal with the People's Republic of China. But China and Japan were already partners in trade and other nongovernmental exchange programs. It was the private sector that nudged Beijing and Tokyo into restoring their relationship, and that's the long and short of it," said Wang.

Mao's authority over the Chinese public also proved to be an important factor. Anti-Japanese sentiment was strong at the time, as many Chinese had lost family members during the Second Sino-Japanese War, not to mention the humiliation they suffered at the hands of Japanese military aggression.

To mitigate these negative sentiments, Mao launched a nationwide campaign to promote the normalization of ties with Japan, arguing that the heavy war indemnities exacted from Germany after World War I caused Germany to vow retaliation against its former enemies. The Chinese people reacted favorably to this campaign because they had strong faith in Mao.

Sloppy translation arouses antipathy

Heated exchanges took place during the normalization talks, and one of them was over the Chinese translation of the Japanese expression meiwaku o okakeshita.

On the night the Japanese delegation arrived in Beijing, a welcoming reception was held at the Great Hall of the People. During his speech, Tanaka referred to the Second Sino-Japanese War and said, "I express my deep remorse once again for the great trouble my country caused the people of China."

The Japanese delegation's Japanese-into-Chinese interpreter used the Chinese expression tian le mafan for Tanaka's words of apology.

This Chinese expression, however, is usually used when apologizing for a minor inconvenience. Naturally, the Chinese people who were expecting a heartfelt apology from Tanaka were taken aback.

Lin Liyun, an adviser to the All China Federation of Returned Overseas Chinese, was at the Great Hall as one of Chou's interpreters. Lin thought the use of tian le ma fan was inappropriate, and overheard Tang Wensheng, another interpreter who was rendering Tanaka's speech into English for the diplomatic corp present at the ceremony, say in a low voice, "This makes (Tanaka's) apology sound far too trite." Lin nodded her agreement to Tang.

Chou listened to Tanaka's speech quietly, but expressed his anger during a meeting the following day. He stated, "The way (Tanaka's) apology was rendered into Chinese will deeply anger the people of China. We Chinese say tian le ma fan only when apologizing for something trivial."

According to Zhang Xiangshan, who was an adviser to the China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs at the time, Tanaka explained to the Chinese that meiwaku o okakeshita implies a deep and sincere apology and a promise to never repeat the same mistake again.

Back in Tokyo, Tanaka himself told a general assembly of Liberal Democratic Party lawmakers of both houses of the Diet, "I explained in Beijing that meiwaku wo okakeshita is a very strong expression of apology that shows one's determination never to make the same mistake again."

Ultimately, the matter was settled by adopting wording in the joint communique to the effect that Japan was "acutely aware of its responsibility for inflicting tremendous damage to the Chinese people, and deeply remorseful for it."

But why didn't the Japanese interpreter use an appropriate Chinese expression that would have accurately conveyed Tanaka's message? I contacted the interpreter--a former Foreign Ministry official--and asked to interview him, but he refused to see me.

Motofumi Asai, president of the Hiroshima Peace Institute at the Hiroshima City University, was a member of the Foreign Ministry team that went to Beijing in September 1972.

"As the content of the normalization talks was classified, the Foreign Ministry put together a delegation consisting only of ministry officials," Asai explained. "The delegation's senior officials spoke no Chinese, and there was nobody with sufficient political sense to monitor the accuracy of the Chinese translation of Tanaka's speech."

And Lin recalled, "The Chinese people had suffered terribly at Japanese hands. There was no way they were going to accept just a perfunctory apology from the Japanese prime minister."

The welcoming reception at the Great Hall of the People was the first postwar occasion for a Japanese leader to convey private thoughts about the war directly to the people of China, thereby allowing the two countries to make a fresh start. But the sentiments that Tanaka voiced in his speech were not properly conveyed to the Chinese people who attended.

The normalization of Japan-China relations resulted in the severance of Japan's diplomatic ties with Taiwan. However, China has since continued to keep a close eye on developments in Japan and Taiwan. Beijing is worried that if war broke out between China and Taiwan over the latter's moves toward independence, the United States would intervene, causing Japan to side with Washington. That would turn Japan and China into enemies again.

Thirty-six years after normalization, Japan-China relations have made huge strides. But friction still arises from time to time over the Taiwan issue and perceptions of history.

Chou En-lai (1898-1976)

As one of the top leaders of the Communist Party, Chou En-lai contributed to the establishment of the People's Republic of China alongside Mao. Chou studied in Japan from 1917 to 1919. A plaque bearing a poem, titled "Uchu Arashiyama" (Arashiyama in the Rain) and written by Chou in Arashiyama in Kyoto Prefecture just before he left Japan, stands in Arashiyama. Chou was premier of China from 1949 until his death. From 1949 to 1958, he doubled as foreign minister. In 1954, he proposed the so-called Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence. After the normalization of relations with Japan, Chou looked forward to revisiting Japan, but his dream remained unfulfilled due to illness.

Mao Tse-tung (1893-1976)

Mao Tse-tung led the Communist Party of China and defeated the Kuomintang in the civil war, and established the People's Republic of China. Mao attended the first session of the National Congress of the Communist Party in 1921 and emerged as the party leader in 1935. In China's war of resistance against Japan, he advocated cooperation with the Kuomintang. Meantime, he established his own philosophy that was based on Marx-Leninism and adapted to China's needs. After the establishment of the People's Republic of China, Mao pursued socialization, but his Great Leap Forward plan of rapid production expansion failed. The damage this dealt the nation was compounded by natural disasters. He led the Cultural Revolution from 1966 and consolidated his absolute power, but the revolution was later denounced for "bringing disaster upon the Communist Party and the country."

World events

February 1965: U.S. bombing of Vietnam begins.

March 1969: Chinese and Soviet forces clash on Damanski Island.

March 1971: China participates in the World Table Tennis Championships in Nagoya for the first time in six years.

April 1971: U.S. Ping-Pong team visits China as part of the Ping-Pong diplomatic offensive).

July 1971: U.S. National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger secretly visits China.

October 1971: China joins the United Nations.

February 1972: U.S. President Richard Nixon visits China.

July 1972: Kakuei Tanaka becomes prime minister of Japan.

September 1972: Tanaka visits China; Japan and China normalize their diplomatic relations.

January 1973: The Paris Peace Accords end the Vietnam War.

August 1978: Japan-China Peace and Friendship Treaty signed.

Salient points of Japan-China Joint Communique

・The Japanese side is keenly conscious of the responsibility for the serious damage that it caused in the past to the Chinese people through war, and deeply reproaches itself.

・The government of Japan recognizes the government of the People's Republic of China as the sole legal government of China.

・The government of the People's Republic of China reiterates that Taiwan is an inalienable part of the territory of the People's Republic of China. The government of Japan fully understands and respects this stand of the government of the People's Republic of China, and it firmly maintains its stand under Article 8 of the Potsdam Proclamation.

・The government of the People's Republic of China declares that in the interest of the friendship between the Chinese and the Japanese peoples, it renounces its demand for war reparation from Japan.

・The normalization of relations between Japan and China is not directed against any third country. Neither of the two countries should seek hegemony in the Asia-Pacific region and each is opposed to efforts by any other country or group of countries to establish such hegemony.(IHT/Asahi: March 28,2008)