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In the early 1970s, table tennis was virtually the only common ground upon which America and China could meet. A surprise invitation for American table tennis players to visit China sparked what the media called "ping-pong diplomacy," resulting in eventual diplomatic relations and a series of people-to-people educational exchanges that continue today. American college students are studying in China, and Chinese students attending American universities. Still, the differences between the US and the PRC are vast. People-to-people diplomacy is a way for two very different countries to communicate about things other than their profound differences.
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00:00Table tennis has never been taken seriously in America, despite elite players representing the United States internationally and at the
00:10Olympics.
00:11Wow!
00:13While derisively called ping-pong, there was a time when a small group of American table tennis players changed history.
00:23And in doing so, opened lines of communication between the United States and China, still vital today.
00:35Table tennis has been played by Americans for decades.
00:40It's considered simple and sedate.
00:43That's not true.
00:45Amazingly, it was also central to one of the biggest diplomatic surprises of the 20th century.
00:55America in 1971 was, at least metaphorically, a country at war with itself.
01:03In large part, that was a reaction to American military forces fighting and dying in Vietnam.
01:10Young people led the way as many rejected the politics of their parents and the lifestyle which those parents had
01:19worked so hard to build.
01:22These young people wanted to change the world.
01:26But many Americans disagreed with them.
01:29The country was incredibly divided.
01:32One reaction to the protests saw angry construction workers in New York City physically attack and injure anti-war demonstrators.
01:43Self-proclaimed revolutionaries planted bombs in college buildings.
01:48And even America's national capital building.
01:52China in 1971 was a country literally at war with itself.
01:58But America's Central Intelligence Agency knew so little about what was happening there, they were reduced to using an American
02:08TV documentary to brief members of Congress and senior government officials.
02:15I woke at midnight and saw my little brother smiling.
02:19I asked him why he smiled, and he said, I dreamed of Chairman Mao.
02:26Young people in China also wanted to change the world, but in a totally different way.
02:35The documentary argued that Chinese leader Mao Zedong, utilizing a powerful cult of personality, had called upon college and high
02:46school students, as well as the military, to reject anything deemed counter-revolutionary.
02:52That included much of the Communist Party leadership, along with parents, teachers, and almost all authority figures.
03:02It was called the Great Proletariat Cultural Revolution.
03:07Under the leadership of Chairman Mao and the Chinese Communist Party, under the guidance of the General Line for Socialist
03:15Construction of the Party to strive hard and strive to advance, and to get greater, faster, better, and more economical
03:23results, and under the three great movements of class struggle, production struggle, and scientific testing, our Chinese people have achieved
03:31great successes.
03:33In 1971, the United States recognized the government on Taiwan as the legitimate government of all China.
03:44What the world did not know was that America and China's leaders wanted to talk, if only about the Soviet
03:52Union, their common enemy, and Moscow's Warsaw Pact allies.
03:58Enter nine American table tennis players.
04:03They played a decisive role in something American media would dub ping-pong diplomacy.
04:10My parents had a table tennis table in our basement, and my brother was still living at home, and he
04:18was a good athlete, and he played table tennis and tennis and all different kinds of sports, and he knew
04:23how to play.
04:24So I would go down there, and he would teach me how to play table tennis, and I just fell
04:30in love with it.
04:30I met Connie through table tennis.
04:34My dad and Connie's brother, Bob, decided to start the Grand Rapids Table Tennis Club in 1956, and my dad
04:45was the city champion that year, and I was actually in the initial membership of that club, and I was
04:5512 years old.
04:56Table tennis can look deceptively easy.
05:00In fact, it is both complex and challenging.
05:05There's probably as many different styles of play as there are personalities in the human race.
05:12But the two main styles, I would say, are offense and defense.
05:18And it just seems like people often are just either offensive-minded or they're defensive-minded when they come to
05:25the table.
05:26I have to say, I'm an offensive-minded player.
05:28I want to hit the ball.
05:29I want to spin the ball.
05:31I want to overpower the appointment.
05:33I want to make it quick and hit hard.
05:35I mean, it's fun to hit the ball hard.
05:36It's fun to make a shot and put it away, and that wins the point.
05:40Japan in late March and early April 1971 was the site of that year's World Table Tennis Championships.
05:51Though America wasn't expected to be competitive, it still sent a team.
05:56In 1971, we went to Nagoya, Japan for the World Championships.
06:01And that was the first of about 10 or 12 years of being on the U.S. team and going
06:08to subsequent U.S. team trips to the World Championships.
06:14But Nagoya, Japan was the first, 1971, 15 years old.
06:19And it was pretty exciting.
06:23I'd never been outside of North America.
06:26It was my first, you know, international tournament.
06:32It was a brand new experience for me.
06:35Dale Sweers was supposed to make that trip too.
06:38Everything was going well until I asked my employer if I could have the time off to go with the
06:46U.S. team to Japan.
06:49And timing is everything.
06:52And my profession is that I am a CPA.
06:56And CPAs get real busy in March and April.
07:02And so my boss would not let me have time off from work to go for two or three weeks
07:10to Japan.
07:11And so Connie went and I didn't.
07:15In China, table tennis, called ping pong there, is a major sport.
07:21It's so important.
07:22I mean, it's a national pastime.
07:24And it's a core part of Chinese sports culture.
07:27And also because Chinese table tennis players have been dominating the international competitions for decades.
07:32So for Chinese, the game also stands as a significant source of national pride.
07:37I know that in the United States, for a very long time, table tennis has been viewed as a basement
07:42sport.
07:43But in China, it's obviously a highly popular public park activity where a skilled player is expected to put on
07:51a show to dazzle his spectators surrounded around him.
07:55The fact table tennis requires minimal equipment certainly played a role in its popularity.
08:03Given that popularity, it became the one international sport in which China could not just participate in, but excel.
08:13In the 1970s and today, Chinese table tennis players were the best in the world.
08:23Glenn Cowan was a member of the 1971 American table tennis team.
08:29He was very much a part of his generation.
08:33Glenn was an interesting character.
08:36He was very gregarious and was just out there.
08:41He thought about things and he did things his own way.
08:45And he was just kind of a happy-go-lucky person.
08:49He had this big floppy hat and he wore bell-bottom trousers and purple-dyed shirt.
08:56So he was, he kind of stood out.
09:00Transportation is an essential element of any international sports event.
09:06One night, we all came back from the practice hall together on a bus that they provided for us to
09:12the hotel.
09:14And Glenn missed that bus.
09:17And so the next bus that came along, he got on and of course it was the Chinese bus with
09:25the players on it.
09:26And he realized when he stepped inside that it was all Chinese.
09:31Well, this we started the field of sports.
09:33So we started playing for school.
09:35So it was like the first time in German.
09:36So the first time in German, listen to my group of sports.
09:36So it was in German, in German, then you went to the sports club.
09:41So he started watching it as a group.
09:44He was a leader in German.
09:47So he was kind of happy to see what he was.
09:56And, he was so happy to come back from the team.
09:59But, he kept going back, with the football championship, he came out for a club.
09:59So I was really a young man.
10:00And, he was like, oh, there was only a movie.
10:00And, he's like, well, he came back from the school.
10:06Photographers were present to witness the scene.
10:10The images they captured were picked up by news agencies around the world.
10:16American Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai
10:22had found the opening they were looking for, a way of unofficially communicating.
10:29No Americans had legally visited China in more than 20 years.
10:35The U.S. table tennis team was invited to visit for a series of what were called friendship matches.
10:43But would the team even go?
10:45That was the last day of the tournament. We had to decide, are we going to go to China?
10:51And is it safe? Do we want to go?
10:54And we had a team meeting, and of course I said, I want to go, yes.
10:58Simply getting to China required plenty of improvisation.
11:03U.S. passports specifically stated they could not be used for travel to China.
11:09An American consular officer solved that problem with a black marking pen.
11:15It was a big surprise, of course, and immediately it was a huge media sensation.
11:21There were cameras in our faces.
11:23There were, you know, everyone's taking photographs.
11:26Um, all of our team mates, uh, everyone was being asked,
11:30can you write, can you write something?
11:32Can you write for the New York Times?
11:34Can you write for life?
11:34Can you write for Newsweek?
11:36We can, you know, you know, we, uh, they all wanted us to go into China
11:42and, um, you know, bring back information.
11:45With no international flight service, the Americans would walk into China
11:51over an old railway bridge linking Hong Kong and the People's Republic of China.
12:01There were Red Guard armies standing on that bridge with rifles.
12:07Needless to say, I was a little nervous, um, about it.
12:12Uh, especially when you see the armed guards, because I thought to myself,
12:16here we are, I'm going into a communistic country and I know very little about it
12:22other than we had no relationship with them.
12:25Um, but yet at the same time, I was excited because I realized they had initiated
12:31the invitation for us to come in to China.
12:34And so they would do everything in their power, uh, to get us back out safely.
12:39They didn't want to have any international incidents.
12:43While teams from Canada and several other countries were also invited to visit,
12:49media attention focused on the Americans, given the symbolism of their presence.
12:54The Americans soon discovered they were considered as exotic as they found their new surroundings.
13:02As to the interactions between the U.S. players and the average people on the Chinese streets,
13:06I think there's just this genuine sense of curiosity from both sides.
13:10Uh, whenever the U.S. team members venture out onto the streets,
13:14they will soon attract a huge crowd.
13:16We're so eager to talk to them and to talk, to find out more about them.
13:20And also, I think, uh, Connie has once remarked to me that he,
13:24she was just amazed by the sight that everyone on the streets were either walking or riding a bike.
13:31I mean, the U.S. and China were very different back then,
13:34but all those differences have served as the spark to ignite the mutual interest
13:39and also as a reminder of the need to get to know each other.
13:43What a thrill.
13:44We played it before 18,000 people in that auditorium.
13:49And, um, here in the United States,
13:51we'd be lucky at our national competition to get, like, two or three hundred people
13:57that'd be watching the match, let alone 18,000 people.
14:01And, of course, most of the spectators in the U.S. are family and friends.
14:07Uh, you don't get too many outside people like you do for football and baseball
14:13and all the major sports.
14:15When we had our matches in Beijing and in Shanghai and in Guangzhou,
14:21we played in three cities, I won three out of four matches.
14:24And I knew that I didn't really deserve to win those matches.
14:31But what we heard over and over again in China was friendship first, competition second.
14:38And that's pretty much what was happening at the table when we played our matches.
14:44When I left China, we left the same way as when we came in.
14:49We, uh, took a train to the border, walked across the border, got on another train.
14:56It was crampacked full.
14:58Every single inch in that train was full of, of journalists.
15:03Both then and now,
15:05official Chinese media has enthusiastically covered these events,
15:10offering what in 1971 was an entirely new message.
15:15Not all Americans were bad.
15:18And some, in fact, were good.
15:21Welcome friends from China.
15:22A 1972 reciprocal visit by Chinese table tennis players to the United States
15:28is often lost in most discussions of ping pong diplomacy.
15:34This time, it was Americans learning that people from what was inevitably called
15:40Red China weren't the strange creatures they've been led to believe.
15:45And so a year later, in April of 1972, the Chinese came to the U.S.
15:52And my husband and I, Dell, were lucky enough to be able to travel around with them to the different
16:00cities that we took them to
16:01and play these friendship matches.
16:05And of course, the friendship matches were billed as friendship first, competition second.
16:12That was really a neat experience to be able to travel with them and get on buses and travel to
16:18the different cities.
16:19In 1972, we were back to the United States.
16:23We were joined by the United States, the United States, the United States, and the United States,
16:28and the United States.
16:28We were joined by the United States.
16:29We were joined by the United States.
16:30This was me.
16:30This was Lee Fung-Yong, this was John De Dong,
16:33Zhang Xilin, Chiu Yen-Li, this was my team.
16:35Cobo Hall in Detroit, better known for concerts by hometown rock heroes like Bob Seger, was one of the event
16:45venues.
16:46When the Chinese team arrived there, we greeted them as they came off the plane and there was a lot
16:54of newspaper people there.
16:56This was the beginning of the two weeks where we were treated almost like rock stars,
17:03where you had the police escort, you had protection as you went from one venue to the other.
17:11So the reception was pretty strong, except we are a free country and there were a lot of people that
17:21didn't like the idea that the Chinese team was here.
17:25One of the people who saw these friendship matches was a high school student from Maryland named Jeff Lehman.
17:33It was just an amazing experience for me to see players like Zheng Minzhi, the women's champion, Li Furong, men's
17:45champion,
17:46playing against some of the top American players, a level of ping pong that I had never experienced.
17:54This was Jeff's first connection to China, but it wouldn't be his last.
18:00The lines of communication forged by the American and Chinese table tennis players led to the landmark visit of American
18:08president and longtime anti-communist Richard Nixon to China,
18:13culminating in eventual diplomatic relations between the two countries.
18:19It also put into motion other forms of people to people diplomacy, which remain crucial today,
18:26like the exchange of college and university students between America and China.
18:32In contemporary China, especially its cities, you can find vivid examples of both daily life and timeless traditions.
18:42It is China's people who helped define it as a nation.
18:46How the Chinese people define themselves and how they see the world.
18:53It underlies a kind of cultural surprise beyond anticipated differences like language and cuisine.
19:01Another thing that was really impressed upon me was the connection that Chinese people and society and indeed the political
19:11system have to their own history.
19:13As an American where I admittedly did not pay the most attention to my American history coursework in middle and
19:20high school,
19:21I was really just impressed and awed by my Chinese classmates' knowledge of their own past,
19:28all the past dynasties, just all of these trends and literature and art and politics and philosophical thought.
19:35They were able to just rattle them off and see continuity through them.
19:39I haven't experienced much culture shock because I am Chinese, surprise,
19:43because I have family in China and I have been here.
19:46But one thing I'll mention was just last week someone told me after about three seconds of talking with me
19:54that they could tell that I was ABC or American born Chinese, not because of my accent or anything like
20:01that,
20:01but because I smiled too much or not too much, but I smiled a lot,
20:06which in general maybe when talking with strangers in China doesn't always happen at first.
20:10So I'm definitely a smiley American.
20:13A nationalist uprising in China during the late 1800s, known in the West as the Boxer Rebellion,
20:21saw Chinese militias declare war on foreigners and Christians.
20:26Despite being forgotten in America, years later it did result in a motion picture called 55 Days at Peking.
20:36We're almost in Peking, the capital city of China.
20:41This is an ancient and highly cultured civilization.
20:45So don't get the idea you're any better than these people just because they can't speak English.
20:51The film dramatized the siege of the so-called Legation District in what was then called Peking by boxer troops,
20:59and the rescue of the foreigners trapped there by combined armies of eight different nations, including America.
21:08At a time when most Chinese were destitute, the Qing dynasty was forced to pay large monetary reparations to the
21:18eight foreign countries who had suffered losses.
21:22But the United States received an overpayment.
21:26And so eventually, after back and forth discussion, it was decided to use that overpayment for China to send students
21:35to the U.S. to study mainly science and engineering.
21:39It was called a solid learning, as that was a term used by the Chinese officials.
21:45That program lasted from 1909 to about 1945.
21:52Overall, about 1,400 Chinese students were sent over to the U.S. to study.
22:00And many of them became leaders in Chinese science, engineering, educational institutions, and other fields.
22:09So the first class came in 1909.
22:12And among, I think, around 70 students that came to the U.S. in 1909 as boxer fellows was Mei
22:22Yiqi, a physicist,
22:24who went back to China and eventually became president of the Qinghua University.
22:30Qinghua University actually was set up with funds from the returned indemnity funds.
22:37Called boxer fellows, a significant number stayed in the United States and made important contributions to American science.
22:46One of them was Nobel Prize winning physicist Chen Ningyang at Stony Brook University in New York.
22:53There was a new university of the State University of New York system.
22:57So he was the first big shot hire that made Stony Brook really a very well regarded university.
23:07And so he retired around 1998, 99.
23:12And then he decided to go to move back to Beijing where he grew up at Qinghua University.
23:17His professor, his father was a professor at Qinghua University.
23:20So he said his life was like a circle.
23:23So he still is living in Beijing.
23:25He's probably, I think, 102 or 103 years old.
23:30The 1949 victory of the communist forces ended the so-called boxer fellows studying in America.
23:38In Korea, American and Chinese soldiers fought each other in brutal hand-to-hand combat.
23:47In Vietnam, America and China fought a proxy war.
23:51It wasn't until President Jimmy Carter took office that China's then paramount leader, Deng Xiaoping,
23:58raised the issue of Chinese students again studying in America.
24:04But Deng wanted assurances from President Carter himself that at least 5,000 students would be allowed to study in
24:14the United States.
24:15Frank Press, Carter's science advisor, telephoned the president from Beijing.
24:21Frank Press called Carter in the middle of the night in Washington, D.C.
24:27So Carter was woken up and, you know, was frustrated getting a phone call.
24:32He thought it was a national security emergency, but it was a call from Beijing.
24:36When he was informed of the discussion, Carter reportedly said,
24:415,000? No problem. Let them send 100,000 and slam the phone, you know, as he colorfully put it
24:49in his memoir.
24:50Of course, eventually, within a few years, I think, I don't know, 10 or 15 years,
24:54the number of Chinese students coming to the U.S. did reach about 100,000.
24:59America's colleges and universities saw the return of Chinese students.
25:03But few, if any, Americans traveled in the opposite direction to study in China.
25:11A 1976 Chinese film celebrated how the Cultural Revolution transformed college education
25:20with the end of entrance exams and admission standards
25:24and the enrollment of peasants, workers, and soldiers
25:28whose class status alone made them eligible to attend.
25:34Colleges and universities in China enrolled students
25:38from the ranks of the workers, the farmers, and the soldiers, the PLA soldiers.
25:44And they were enrolled based on, mostly on their political, you know, reliability
25:51and ideological loyalty instead of academic skills.
25:57And so they reversed that in 1977 when they restored the national entrance exam.
26:06Something like 5 million youth took the exam nationwide,
26:13vying for something like 250,000 slots.
26:21Jaime Flor Cruz, an idealistic university student and political activist in the Philippines,
26:28was invited to visit China in the early 1970s.
26:33Then the political situation back home took a terrible, violent turn, stranding him in China.
26:40And so we asked our Chinese hosts if we could extend our three weeks' stay
26:49longer.
26:50And they said, fine.
26:51They knew the circumstances.
26:53And so they just added a few open cities into our itinerary.
27:00Well, it turned out to be a longer wait than that.
27:07Because a year later, months later, the president at that time, President Marcos declared martial law,
27:17more arrests, and the prospect of going home as planned dimmed after that.
27:26Another year later, my passport expired.
27:29And so I became a stateless citizen in China.
27:34In 1977, Peking University admitted the first post-cultural revolution students.
27:43Among them was Jaime Flor Cruz.
27:46Peking University, I think, got the best of the best, the cream of the crop of that year.
27:53Many of my cohorts, my schoolmates, were very brilliant brain, but also very passionate students.
28:03Why?
28:04Because they saw China go through the Cultural Revolution.
28:10They knew what was wrong, and they knew that China needed to change.
28:15And they were very passionate, very thirsty for knowledge of what they can gain so that China
28:23can be changed, can be reformed.
28:25So this was a dictionary, a political dictionary, that I borrowed from my Chinese friend,
28:31who was a professional translator.
28:34So he lent it to me, and because this was not available in the bookstores,
28:38he lent it to me and I copied by hand entries.
28:44This is one of the notebooks on which I copied it.
28:48I didn't really finish, maybe I finished a third of it.
28:51And then when I handed it back to him, he said, you can keep it.
28:56Jaime Flor Cruz eventually became the Beijing bureau chief for CNN,
29:02interviewing top Chinese officials, like the then mayor of Shanghai
29:08and the future secretary general of the Communist Party of China, Jiang Zemin.
29:14Not until the early 2000s, when Deng Xiaoping's policies,
29:19dubbed Reform and Opening, had fundamentally changed the country,
29:25did American students and American universities begin to view study in China as a viable option?
29:33One was Rutgers University.
29:36My name is Isaac Gottlieb. I'm with Rutgers University since 1999.
29:41And I'm teaching in China for the last seven years.
29:47Rutgers has an executive MBA program in Shanghai.
29:50The program in Shanghai started in the year 2000.
29:55The reason we chose Shanghai is because Shanghai has a large number of multinational companies,
30:02global companies, and many expatriates coming to Shanghai.
30:08And this is an opportunity for Rutgers to have an executive MBA program here.
30:13New York University, partnering with East China Normal University,
30:19had ambitious plans for a Shanghai campus.
30:22The course of study went beyond the standard academic curriculum
30:27to encompass what might be termed international immersion.
30:32An architect of that approach was amateur table tennis player Jeffrey Lehman.
30:38So we have a total of 2,000 undergraduates,
30:41but always half are from China, half are from the rest of the world.
30:46And the reason we are so insistent on that ratio is it enables to assign every one of our students
30:54a roommate
30:55who has a passport that's different from their own.
30:58Every Chinese student has a roommate from a country outside China.
31:03Every non-Chinese student has a roommate from China.
31:07Among our non-Chinese students, usually 50 to 60 percent of them are Americans.
31:15Students make their way to class on scooters and bicycles at Tsinghua University in Beijing,
31:22one of China's most respected schools.
31:25It is the site of a remarkable educational experiment, conceived and put into motion by one person.
31:34Steve Schwartzman decided way back about 15 years ago that China was important
31:40and that every leader, every future leader, really every person, but every future leader should understand China.
31:48And the purpose of the program, based on that very simple idea,
31:52is to identify the future leaders from all over the world, from different disciplines, different backgrounds,
32:00bring them to China so whatever they did in their lives, they would have China as part of their education.
32:06And as he likes to say, China this day and time is core curriculum.
32:12Bringing together the best and the brightest from around the world,
32:17every year 200 students are selected from a pool of over 5,000 applicants
32:23to participate in a totally free master's degree program in which they study, live, and travel throughout China.
32:33They are known as Schwarzman Scholars.
32:37Well, we've developed a process over the last 10 years.
32:41It's a very rigorous process.
32:43We interview students from all over the world in three or four different regions.
32:48And we identify the students by going to universities, recruiting at universities,
32:53recruiting at young professional organizations.
32:55We have recommenders of students.
32:58We really identify future leaders in a variety of ways.
33:01And then we have a rigorous process, an interview process that starts with readers all over the world
33:07who read the applications.
33:08We have over 5,000 applications last year.
33:12And we then have an interview process where we actually have panels made up of leaders
33:17from different countries, different disciplines, who interview these,
33:20a small number of the applicants, and then select a class of somewhere between 150 and 200 every year.
33:27In Module 3, so my third term, I get to take a class called Leadership in Diplomacy and Security,
33:33taught by the former U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan.
33:36I'm also taking a class called Leading in State-Owned Enterprises,
33:40which is led by a former chairman of one of the largest state-owned enterprises in China.
33:44And so I feel like those are opportunities that just would not be possible if I wasn't here at a
33:49program like Schwarzman Scholars.
33:51So I'm really excited about that.
33:52Everyone at Schwarzman Scholars gets a degree in a master's in global affairs.
33:57In undergrad, I focused on public policy with a concentration in international development
34:02and minored in French and African studies.
34:06So I think those are kind of the areas of study in general.
34:09It's about getting a better understanding of the world.
34:12With a degree here, it's really about understanding China better through perhaps not only a Western lens.
34:20And in general, I would say that I'm most interested in the intersection of the performing arts and activism.
34:27For most American students, studying in China was a carefully considered decision.
34:34But for others, it was something of a gamble.
34:38I wanted to come to China just to really be able to better understand the political institutions,
34:43all of the institutions that work in governance that relate to public sector, private sector.
34:48And I felt like being here would be the best way to really get a true understanding of the nature
34:52of the environment.
34:53I was a bit worried that perhaps I couldn't relate to the Chinese scholars here or maybe Chinese people and
35:00whatnot.
35:02But I kind of realized, for one, at least with the scholars, I can speak my favorite language, which is
35:07Chinglish.
35:07So mostly Chinese, but also a bit of English.
35:10But beyond that, I am Chinese, like I am part of the diaspora.
35:13And I have very different lived experience as the people who grew up here.
35:18But there is a shared common sense of kind of culture and heritage.
35:23And that's held true.
35:24And my mom and my family has exposed me to that really well.
35:28So I actually have found myself a lot more connected to, you know, in many ways, the motherland
35:35than I kind of thought coming in as someone who was born and raised, lived my entire life in the
35:40United States.
35:41Just based on high school education, I think I had some sense that China was the big topic, would be
35:48the big topic in the 21st century.
35:50I was applying to college and NYU had this part in their application that said, you know, we'd like to
35:56send your application to Shanghai.
35:58We're starting this new campus, NYU Shanghai.
36:02And I said, what the heck?
36:03And I think that was actually the reaction of a lot of people in my year, at least a lot
36:07of Americans, was what the heck.
36:10I think was like the thing they thought right before making the decision.
36:13Living in Beijing has not been too much of a challenge outside of the weather.
36:21But I was based in Chicago previous to this, so I'm a bit used to it being cold and cloudy.
36:26I will say the campus environment here is a bit different than what I was used to in my undergrad.
36:32The first time I wanted to invite a friend to visit the Schwarzman College, I had to apply first for
36:36access to Tsinghua
36:37and then for access to Schwarzman Scholars, whereas I'm just used to people walking directly into any building on a
36:43campus in the United States.
36:45While the campus and classrooms are the primary locations for studies, exploring China and its people is an equally important
36:55part of the curriculum.
36:57They also have in China the back of the currency, which you don't see that much these days anymore because
37:03everything's digital.
37:04Every back of the currency had an image of somewhere in China.
37:09So we would do our best to sort of like do that alignment of like, okay, this bill has Guilin
37:17on it.
37:17And so when we were in Guilin, on our little raft down the Yangtze River, like holding it up and
37:23trying to be like, this is it.
37:25I traveled extensively in China.
37:27I think I've been to more Chinese provinces than U.S. states actually, which is a fun trivia fact about
37:32me.
37:33I was actually in China this August.
37:36I was shocked that still to this day, Google Maps is blocked.
37:40Your only option is Baidu Maps and Baidu Maps is in Chinese.
37:44And so if you don't speak Chinese, it really is very, very difficult to tourism in China.
37:49Traveling to America allows Chinese students to explore the reality of America and its culture, along with their formal classwork.
37:59I also heard about like, oh, it's not safe in America.
38:03You can't pull your phone out when you're on the street.
38:06You will get robbed.
38:06And then like, you can walk around at night.
38:11It's just not happening.
38:13And there are a lot of gunshots happening and all that.
38:16But personally, I've not been too many places in America, but at least in Burbank, Los Angeles.
38:22I don't feel that.
38:24I think it's okay to be here and I can scroll my phone around the street.
38:29That's fine, at least from my experience.
38:32Nothing better typifies the American imagination than its movies.
38:37And nowhere captures that vibe better than Hollywood.
38:42It draws filmmaking students from around the world.
38:47When I first got here, it was such a culture shock.
38:50Because even though, you know, I watched so many movies, I've read about America.
38:56But like, coming here actually, like in person, I think it was very refreshing.
39:02Because I didn't realize that how open like, people are here.
39:09Which is like, in a good way.
39:10In my culture, everything is like, it's not that straightforward.
39:14So here, you know, the fact that people are more like, straightforward.
39:19And like, it's more, I guess, easy going, I would say.
39:24And like, very, just very passionate too.
39:27Like here, especially in Los Angeles, people are so passionate.
39:31Which I love.
39:32The problem for study will be my language, I guess.
39:39When I first got here, I'm not that confident with my English.
39:44For some reason.
39:46And then, it's low-key hard to me to write an essay.
39:53Like, academic essay especially.
39:57In a different language.
40:01But once I started writing it and getting used to it, I'm fine right now.
40:08Still, people from different backgrounds
40:11inevitably view and do things differently.
40:15I did feel that I had a lot of cultural adaptation to do just to the environment and atmosphere of
40:22living in a big city.
40:22I grew up in a very small town, only a few thousand people.
40:26And living in such a large city as Shanghai, almost 30 million people.
40:33A megalopolis, one of the biggest cities in the world, was such a huge shift for me.
40:39I worked mostly in the journalism and media industry when I was in Shanghai.
40:44I did a lot of internships there in different Chinese outlets, most of which were state-owned.
40:52Because that's just what media is in China.
40:54Not by my personal choice to go there or not.
40:57And seeing my co-workers kind of navigate very deftly a system that seemed so Byzantine to me.
41:08They just had such a feeling for how to talk about something in a way that would get passed.
41:14How to express an issue in a way that it could be expressed.
41:18And that really, that really impressed me.
41:23The arrival of COVID in 2019 changed everything.
41:28Non-resident foreigners were required to leave China.
41:32It would be many months before they could return, if they returned at all.
41:38Airline service to and from China was dramatically curtailed.
41:42The United States eventually allowed foreigners to again enter the country.
41:48Provided they received American-approved COVID vaccines.
41:53None of which were available in China.
41:56By the time student exchanges began again, the world was a different place.
42:03Well, it is certainly true that over the past few years,
42:08the number of American college students who have come to study in China has plummeted.
42:15If you go back 10 years, there were 15,000 American students studying in China as college students.
42:24Last year, the number was more like 850.
42:29Now, of those 850 Americans studying in China, about 60% were studying at NYU Shanghai.
42:39President Xi Jinping of China has proposed a large-scale student exchange program
42:44inviting about 50,000 U.S. students to go to study in China.
42:50As a historian, this does bring up comparisons with earlier programs,
42:56like the Boxer Fellows program in the early 20th century.
42:59So, I see both similarities and differences.
43:03The difference stands out at this point in the sense that, for one,
43:09this scale is much larger than that Boxer Fellows.
43:13You know, there were about 1,400, but now we're talking about 50,000.
43:17And, of course, the geopolitical situation is different as well.
43:22Today, America and China are experiencing what has been characterized as a disengagement.
43:30Trade friction, of course, remains a significant irritant.
43:35China's assertion of sovereignty over vast areas of the South China Sea
43:40has set the stage for possible military confrontation.
43:44Given the worsening of U.S.-China relations, is people-to-people diplomacy superfluous? Irrelevant.
43:53I definitely don't see the merit of that argument.
43:57I think that if tensions are increasing, I think the best way to diffuse that
44:04is by having these personal relationships and connection.
44:08I think that although American student interest in China may be declining,
44:14I also think that there are lots of students who want to be here.
44:18This program was created for the moment we're in right now.
44:21And I think the core mission of this program is the belief in constructive engagement
44:26between China and the U.S. and China and the world.
44:30And so here we are in this moment where I think this program is actually delivering on that mission,
44:37which is that we're in a very fraught moment in this world.
44:41And these scholars that are the future leaders of the world, all over the world,
44:45in their specific areas of expertise, are learning how to engage with China.
44:51I think there definitely is a disengagement happening between the U.S. and China.
44:56But I think that makes it more important than ever to come here and to engage.
45:01Previously for work, I was an investor.
45:03Investors try to be contrary and that's how you make money.
45:06I saw everybody deciding China was uninvestable and decided it might make sense
45:12to bet on China's continued relevance globally.
45:15You know, there's a billion and a half people here.
45:18GDP per capita is still only 13K.
45:21There's a lot of upside.
45:22I think that this place is not going anywhere anytime soon.
45:25It's going to continue to be important.
45:26And so I saw opportunity that I wanted to explore.
45:29One of the things that makes, I think, life in China for foreigners increasingly difficult
45:34is that there's sort of a social negative feedback loop.
45:38Once some of the foreigners leave, others leave, the social networks begin to collapse
45:44and there become, I think, very few of those nodes left to sustain a community.
45:53On one subject, there is definite agreement.
45:57Putting yourself in a new, different environment almost inevitably leads to personal growth.
46:04I know that on social media, videos that show what regular life is like in China has a lot of
46:11engagement.
46:11I think people are curious.
46:13And I think that we need to have more people come to China and show, you know, life is different
46:18here,
46:19but there's also so many similarities.
46:21I filmed a video of myself just going to brunch here and using the different apps that you need to
46:25get around.
46:26And a difference is that you need an app to scan a QR code or need to scan the QR
46:31code to order your menu.
46:32The experience is remarkably similar to me going to get brunch in New York City or back home in Charlotte.
46:38So I think that people need to see that although there's a lot of differences, there also are a lot
46:43of similarities.
46:44It's one of those places where I think living is learning.
46:49And I think, like, these sorts of visits to the Great Wall or to Shanghai or to the Terracotta soldiers
46:56are brilliant,
46:59but they're no substitute for life, for life experience, for the experience of having your neighbors invite you over.
47:14for one of the holidays, for being on one of the trains.
47:18There was one incident that I remember from my first year.
47:22Some person, group, organization, I don't know who, had just made a little event to help foreign students learn about
47:30how to travel around China.
47:32And they were going to give guides to three places.
47:36So the little poster said, come learn how to travel in China, learn how to travel to Yunnan, Chengdu, and
47:42Taiwan.
47:43And of course, when I saw the poster, I was like, oh, cute.
47:49Someone is, you know, trying to teach us how to go around.
47:52But then someone had crossed out the Taiwan word and written Taiwan is not a part of China.
47:57And that was kind of a moment of, whoa, for me, just even a small issue.
48:06Someone clearly trying to do something sweet for their foreign classmates, not really thinking of anything,
48:14had suddenly touched upon this live wire of a geopolitical issue.
48:18In orientation, I tell all of our new students, you should be spending two hours every day seriously engaging with
48:27a classmate from another country.
48:29I warn them that's not going to be easy because when you are engaging with someone from another country,
48:36especially if you're not speaking in your own first language, you'll be frustrated.
48:41And so it's easier just to go back and be with people who have a much more shared common base.
48:50But I say if you get into that temptation, you'll miss out on a key opportunity here.
48:57Which raises an intriguing question.
48:59Does study in another country change you?
49:03I'll not say change, but I learned more about myself.
49:06Like, I realized that I can take care of myself really well and then I can manage my time.
49:11Like, even though, like, my family's not here, my mom is not behind my back pushing me to do all
49:16the things,
49:17be like, hey, it's time for homework, you need to do this, then, that.
49:20I can do it, like, myself.
49:23I can plan my time really well.
49:25I'm not missing any homework.
49:27I am doing okay with my grades.
49:30So I think that's good, I guess.
49:34You know, even though we can see, like, we can read about different countries or different cultures online or in
49:45the newspaper,
49:46it's always different when you're there in person.
49:49Because you really get to feel how it's like living here, how it feels like to be, I guess, local.
49:58And also, it helps me understand that the local culture, like, how it can change me in a better way.
50:08Unfortunately, like much in America and China's shared history, the story of ping pong diplomacy has largely been forgotten.
50:18Growing up, I don't think I recall a lot about ping pong diplomacy, but I do remember my school in
50:25eighth grade.
50:26We mentioned a little bit about ping pong diplomacy when we were talking about American history,
50:31and especially during the Cold War when China and the U.S., their relations were really bad.
50:38But it was because of ping pong that brought them together and have closer relations.
50:45In 2024, Amy Wong represented the United States at the Paris Olympics as a member of the American table tennis
50:54team.
50:55Yes, I think when I tell other people that I play table tennis, they're usually like,
50:59Oh, is that just ping pong or even sometimes, like, beer pong?
51:04But over time, once they, like, play the sport against me, I think they realize the complexity of the sport
51:12and how hard it can be.
51:13And it's not just some basement sport that you play with your friends or family.
51:18It is a very competitive sport that requires a lot of training and physical fitness.
51:24And, yeah, I think it's like other sports, it requires a lot of time and dedication to become a good
51:31player.
51:33In the early 1970s, nine young American table tennis players helped break down the barriers separating two countries.
51:42Being in China was just like being in another planet.
51:48Everything was so different. It smelled different. It looked different.
51:52I'm still in touch with the people that went to China with us in 1971.
51:56There's only four of us still alive in this world.
52:03Tim Bogan, who's 94. We email almost every day.
52:08And the three women who were on the team, Connie Suarez, Olga Soltes, and myself, are still alive and kicking.
52:15And it's always a pleasure to stay in touch with them.
52:19And we've shared some really amazing times together.
52:23There are also digital links across the miles and the years.
52:28I think there is a few lessons that can be learned from the 71 ping pong diplomacy is that whenever
52:38you have exchanges like that, those exchanges break down barriers and they open up the doors for communication.
52:48Sometimes you need conditions for these people-to-people exchanges to take place.
52:53And you have these conditions in 1971, in the early 1970s.
52:57There's a major policy change at all time.
53:00The mutual decision by the U.S. and China to open to each other created the condition necessary for these
53:06people-to-people exchanges to take place.
53:08We take young people with wildly different views of the world, but a curiosity about the world, and have to
53:14learn how to interact with each other in meaningful and productive and kind and empathetic ways.
53:21That's actually incredibly difficult.
53:24And the whole four years was a huge learning experience, I think, for the community as a whole to navigate
53:30through these political and just emotional issues that came up.
53:36Seeing the contrasts made me really appreciate America's commitment to a robust civil society probably more than it ever would
53:46have if I had just attended university in the U.S.
53:49And that's something that I have genuine affection and appreciation for and feel protective of and want to advocate for.
53:56Relations between the Philippines and China seem even more challenging than those of the United States and the PRC.
54:05They center on territorial disputes in the South China Sea.
54:10So it might surprise some that the Philippines ambassador to China remains a strong proponent of people-to-people diplomacy.
54:21Peking University graduate Jaime Flor Cruz is now the Philippine ambassador to China.
54:28We're going through difficulties, we're going through difficult moments or chapters in our relationships, but it's even more important that
54:37we keep that people-to-people relations.
54:41That's our, that's our, that's my own advocacy as well.
54:45Here I'm trying to, you know, we are very, very welcoming of any Philippine groups coming to China.
54:56I tell them about what's going on.
54:59And then I find out that most of the time they tell me that it's the China that they see
55:07is not quite the China that they expected.
55:10In the same way that when I first visited China 53 years ago, it was not the China that I
55:17expected.
55:18American and Chinese students seem destined to play a continuing role in U.S.-China relations.
55:26Through them, the two countries can talk to each other, not at each other.
55:32Because if you're going to have a conversation, both sides need to be in the same room.
55:39I know.
55:40I know.
55:40If you're going to have a conversation, both sides need to be in the same room.
55:59You need to be in the same room by visiting China.
55:59I'm going to have a conversation with some starting questions.
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