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INTRODUCTION
The Washington-Beijing route is destined to be one of the most covered diplomatic
channels in the next months and years: the world’s main developed country and the
world’s main developing country cannot afford not to increase their collaboration and ties.
Given that, the Obama administration is called to a hard task: how to further improve a
relation that is already the best in the 20 years following the Tiananmen events and maybe
the best ever? Obama inherited a positive and constructive dialogue from the previous
administration: China has been upgraded to the status of ―responsible stakeholder‖ and
the two countries have been dealing with each other regularly and in a wide spectrum of
issues. The new administration seems to be willing to engage China in a even broader
agenda: besides trying to renovate longstanding crucial areas of cooperation, Obama aims
to add new bilateral understandings like climate change, energy, arms control and joint
solutions to the financial crisis.
However, since the two countries still look at each other with a latent dubiety, none of
these goals can be accomplished without a prior investment in mutual trust. Given the
intangibility of the obstacle, traditional policies need to be massively implemented by ―soft‖
measures, like for instance the recourse of culture. By the concept of ―Soft Power‖, coined
by Joseph Nye at the beginning of the 90s, we now mean the capability of a state to gain
the outcome it wants thanks to its appeal and fascination. Nowadays, the highly
intertwined international system allows and sometimes demands state to exert influence
through persuasion rather than coercion, through engagement rather than force. This is
why the more attractive a nation can portrait itself to the eyes of an ally or a partner, the
more chances it will have to get the outcome it wants. As Nye argues, states cannot rely
exclusively on their traditional diplomacy or their military might in order to succeed in the
international arena. This type of reasoning seems to apply perfectly also for the current
relationship between the China and US: the mere existence of the necessity to cooperate
in hard power realms (such as economy, global warming, nuclear non-proliferation etc.)
does not mean that the two nations will be willing to collaborate and thus high diplomacy
does need to be complemented by low diplomacy in a trust-building process that needs to
start from the very grassroots level.
Governments have long understood the importance of promoting their own image in the
public opinions abroad. Thus, starting from the XIX century, pioneer-states like France,
4
UK, Germany and then, subsequently the USA, have invested money to spread their
culture and languages around the world. Public diplomacy has gone gradually evolving
and now it is seen as a more comprehensive discipline that a country uses to
communicate with publics in other nations, aimed at informing and influencing audiences
overseas for the purpose of promoting the national interest and advancing its foreign
policy goals. It includes such activities as educational exchange programs for scholars and
students; visitor programs; language training; cultural events and exchanges; and radio
and television broadcasting. Such activities usually focused on improving the country’s
image or reputation as a way to shape the wider policy environment in one or more target
countries.
This thesis aims to analyze the efforts, the strategies and the initiatives that have been
carried on by the former two administrations and by the current Obama presidency.
Before dealing with the mere public diplomacy realm, the study reviews the overall
diplomatic relationship between USA and China. After reviewing the diplomatic
rollercoaster of the relation starting from the ―Loss if China‖ up to the current days, the first
chapter analyzes the Sino-American relationship through the prism of the classical
dichotomy ―realism versus liberalism‖. Then, the second paragraph of the chapter puts
emphasis on the incapability of the two states to build a trustworthy communication
between each other and on the lingering mutual distrust that hampers a definitive step-up
of the relation. The final paragraph elucidates why and how public diplomacy can be an
effective solution to these issues and serves as a prelude for the following analytical part
of the American public diplomacy with China of the last 18 years.
Indeed, the second chapter looks specifically at the strategies and initiatives undertaken
by Clinton and Bush in order to comprehend the negative legacy the current president has
inherited and to figure out his first moves. After an analysis of the overall crisis of American
fascination that Obama has been trying to reverse, the study looks at the current condition
of the American soft power and the strategies that the White House has initiated to pursue
the soft engagement with China. It is examined what constraints the administration has
inherited and the other peculiar slippery slopes China presents. Then, the final part of the
chapter investigates two traditional sources of soft power in American tradition Obama can
count on: the exchange of people and the contribution guaranteed by non-state actors and
private associations. The former is historically the backbone of any public diplomacy
strategies since the very beginning of the discipline: however, by analyzing data of the
governmental exchange programs and of the overall flux of ―human capital‖ that USA has
5
been welcoming in its territory one can easily see how this branch of people-to-people
diplomacy still remains the most valuable resource in a long period engagement. The latter
is the reflection of a quintessential characteristic of American society, i.e. the willingness to
gather in associations and a vivid cultural activity permeating the populace. Therefore,
besides the official and government-sponsored policies, a paragraph is dedicated to those
private associations and firms that have been contributing to shorten the distance between
China and USA. A particular attention is devoted in the NBA (National Basketball
Association), trying to find the parallelisms and differences between the well-known Ping
Pong Diplomacy of early 70s and a new form of soft approach relying on the former sport
association.
The third chapter deals with the other side of the Sino-American relationship, i.e. whether
and how China is ―welcoming‖ and counterbalancing the American soft power: the chapter
focuses on how Beijing has been dealing with the way China has developed its own soft
power and what consequences the Chinese soft power has represented and will represent
for the world and mainly for the Unites States. First, it is taken into account how the
philosophy of the ―peaceful development‖ has been functional to promote Chinese
interests in the international political context. Then, it is examined how Beijing has been
managing its soft rise, looking at the structure and the functioning of Chinese public
diplomacy and how it differs from the models of US and western powers. A specific
attention it is put on those economic aspects that have played a role in the promotion of
China’s image, such as the so-called ―Beijing Consensus‖ and the policy of aids. Finally, it
will be examined the Sino-American relationship under a soft power perspective in order to
investigate the implications of Chinese soft power for the monopolistic narrative-producer
of the last 20 years.
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CHAPTER ONE
THE SINO-AMERICAN RELATIONSHIP: A HARD NUT TO CRACK FOR
PUBLIC DIPLOMACY
THE UNITED STATES AND CHINA SINCE 1949: HISTORY OF A TROUBLESOME
DIPLOMATIC RELATIONSHIP
«Now what do the Chinese communists want? They don’t want just Quemoy and Matsu.
They don’t just want Formosa. They want the world»
Richard Nixon in debate with John Kennedy, 1958
1
«We simply cannot afford to leave China forever outside the family of nations. (..) The
world cannot be safe until China changes. (..) Dealing with Red China is something like
trying to cope with the more explosive ghetto elements on our country»
Richard Nixon in Foreign Affairs, October 1967
2
«You know, professor, I used to think that way too. But it seems to me that times have
changed»
President Nixon talking to an unnamed conservative professor, 1969
3
«Premier Chou En-Lai has extended an invitation to President Nixon to visit China. (..)
President Nixon has accepted the invitation with pleasure»
Press announcement, July 15, 1971
4
The loss of China
The announcement coming from the Gate of Heavenly Peace (Tiananmen) on October 1
st
1949 shocked and confused America: Mao Zedong just declared the birth of the People’s
Republic of China (PRC, from now on) and confirmed what he had already anticipated that
the new China would have joined the URSS opposing the imperialist USA. The time of
insult and humiliation was said to be over, and a new era of Chinese emancipation was
about to begin. During the next 25 years American politicians and intellectuals would be
racked by the search of those responsible of the ―loss of China‖.
After 4 years of cold war, the anti-Soviet Union hysteria made everyone associate Mao
and his movement as a mere puppet in the hands of Moscow: most of the Americans
1
Claude Buss. China: the People’s Republic of China and Richard Nixon. San Francisco: W.H. Freeman
and Company, 1983 pp.69
2
Ibidem, p.69
3
Ibidem, p.69
4
Ibidem, p.70
7
failed to see the uniqueness of the Chinese case and the deeper sources of Chinese
revolution. Since right after the death of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Truman and his
administration were striving to limit the global communist expansion and launched an
assertive and hostile foreign policy against Stalin: they saw the Soviet interest in
Manchuria and the rise of Chinese Communists as a copy of the situation in Europe.
Truman believed that it was necessary to preserve order and stability in China as a way to
block Moscow. The internal contending forces in China were interpreted as proxies of the
rivalry between Washington and Moscow. That is why during the four years of the bloody
civil war in China following the Japanese withdrawal from the country in 1945, the US
supported financially and militarily the Chinese nationalist party (KMT) guided by Chaing
Kai Shek. Initially the effort seemed to pay off, leading the KMT to control the main urban
centers: however the communist guerrilla forces were increasingly controlling the
countryside and began isolating the Nationalist position. Washington faced the dilemma of
whether to commit further to the Nationalist cause by expanding the military deployment or
to leave Chiang to his own fate. As almost everyone in Washington opposed to dispatch a
huge American force, Truman opted for an attempt to mediate a coalition settlement.
Although secretary of State Marshall’s diplomatic mission lead to an ephemeral truce
between the two parties, the Truman administration demonstrated not to have a practical
solution for Chinese internal problems and preferred to focus on the reconstruction of
Western Europe: to put it more bluntly, China was thought to be too weak and irrelevant at
that time to justify a massive commitment. Truman’s policy were heavily shaped by a
number of influential of advisors: Dean Acheson, who became secretary of State after
Marshall’s retirement, policy planning staff director George Kennan and Assistant
secretary for the far East Dean Rusk all urged the president to minimize American
involvement. Not only American interests were insufficient but also any increased aid to
KMT would have jeopardized the chances to have future relations with the winning
Communists. Without an American broad support, the bad military administration and the
corruption of KMT finally lead to its defeat and the separation between the PRC,
controlling all the mainland China, and Republic of China, whose jurisdiction was restricted
to the little Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen, Matsu and several small outlying Fujianese islands.
Truman administration never recognized the newborn PRC arguing that the government
was not in control of the entire country and not in accordance to the will of its own people.
Truman administration came under attack for its supposed softness to communism and for
the lack of an overall strategy. A group of Republican Senators and Congressmen
8
criticized Truman first for having tried to include the Communist on a coalition government
and then for abandoning the KMT in the battle against the Communist. The peak of the
criticism and of the communist hysteria was ignited by the famous speech of Senator Mc
Carthy on February 9, 1950. He exploded against some so-called ―Communist‖ inside the
State Department that were the architects of a policy that responded too little too late to
the China issue and sold China ―down the river‖. According to Mc Carthy the presence of
communists inside the American bureaucracy, together with spies, moles and sympathetic
diplomats was the ultimate reason why the US lost China. Charges of disloyalty were
based on the fact that some officials were anti-Chiang Kai Shek and therefore, allegedly,
procommunist. The speech was followed only 5 days later by a treaty of alliance between
China and Russia and Mc Carthy’s arguments gained a new momentum: the fear for the
formation of a communist monolithic block formed by Russia and China ignited a witch-
hunt in the internal arena and prevented by all means the possibility to start an
harmonious relationship with China.
The following outbreak of the Korean war in June 1950 represented the incarnation of this
tension and a further escalation in the deterioration of the relationship: Truman declared
that an attack to Taiwan equaled an attack to the United States and sent a military mission
to the island in order to assist the utilization of American forthcoming aids. Beijing accused
Washington of invasion and as soon as the United Nation troops crossed the 38
th
parallel
in October, Chinese ―volunteers‖ entered the war. By that time the China turned from a
ideological and strategic threat to a global security threat (at least according to General
McArthur) and physical war enemy: about 142,000 Americans were killed in Korea and
Chinese casualties surpassed a million, including Mao’s son.
The red scare started to expand in the internal arena and communist paranoia fed upon
itself. Not only McCarthyism generated havoc in the Truman administration, but it provided
a fertile ground at the polls: smart politicians could use the denunciation of softness to
communism to promote their selves to the eyes of the public opinion. The quintessence of
this strategy I may be identified in Richard Nixon, who thanks to his fervent anti-communist
rhetoric gained the position of vice president in the following Eisenhower Administration.
On the Chinese side, this fervent American enmity ignited the allegations against the
American imperialism and bellicosity, further nurturing a sense of victimization that
historically marked Chinese society (cfr. Zhao 2007 and 2009).
As Michael Schaller points out,
9
«The dramatic reveals of 1949 were not nearly so startling when seen in the perspective of
the previous 150 years. From their initial contacts the Americans and Chinese
misunderstood one another, reflecting their radically different cultures and histories. They
each saw virtue and progress in terms of their own norms and values. What was different
was, by definition, inferior».
5
The denial phase
The Korean War froze Sino-American relationship in a pattern of hostility: starting from the
advent to the White Hose of Dwight Eisenhower, Washington and Beijing went through 20
years of adversarial confrontation. There were no diplomatic contacts between the two
countries and the US stubbornly kept on denying the official recognition to the PRC.
China became a central theater of the overall anti-communist campaign: Eisenhower
administration sought to contain the expansion of Chinese power by a series of bilateral
treaties with Asian countries like Japan, Korea, Philippines, Thailand and Pakistan. Since
Beijing never kept secret its intention to help Ho Chi Minh or to ―liberate‖ Taiwan, the
Secretary of State John Foster Dulles urged to point out that any renewal of Korea war
would mean war against the mainland and that the USA was prepared to massive
retaliation.
Together with the President and Vice-President Nixon, Dulles played an important role in
shaping the policy toward China. Eisenhower even remarked: «If it’s in the Bible and it’s
good enough for Foster, then it’s good for me».
6
Together with a influential China lobby in
the Congress and a broad range of military, religious, economic and intellectual leaders he
was convinced that PRC represented a concrete danger to American security. Moreover,
as a devout Presbyterian layman, he connoted anticommunism with a spirit of religious
crusade. He believed that PRC was a godless illegal regime that did not «conform to the
practice of civilized nations».
7
The US did not have to recognize Beijing or have any
relationship with the regime: instead it should have sought to promote the general
conditions on order to overthrow it. This was the conceptual base on which American
policy of this age relied on: even after the Korea armistice in 1953, Washington continued
to oppose any relaxation of the tension and maintained a strategic comprehensive
embargo. The blockade was extended to human beings as well as material items: it was
5
Michael Schaller. The United State and China in the Twentieth Century. New York; Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1990, pp.5
6
Claude Buss. China: the People’s Republic of China and Richard Nixon. San Francisco: W.H. Freeman
and Company, 1983 pp.78
7
Michael Schaller, The United State and China in the Twentieth Century. New York; Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1990, pp.145
10
forbidden for American tourist, scholars or journalist to travel to China and similar
restrictions were imposed on Chinese people wishing to visit the US. For instance, the
numerous Chinese scholars that came to the US in the 1940s and that wanted to go back
to China instead of Taiwan saw their requests denied until the late 1950s.
A clear example of the stubbornness of American diplomacy of that time may be
represented by the government policy according to which all the officials could not refer to
the capital of the newborn PRC as ―Beijing‖ but rather as ―Peiping‖: the former means
―northern capital‖ while the latter was the name adopted under the KMT, when the
nationalist moved the capital to Nanking, and means ―northern peace‖ (cfr. Shaller 1990
and Kuznit 1984). In fact, even rhetoric was functional to show the refusal to accept the
legality of the communist regime: a memo that Dulles presented to the press in January
1958 stated firmly: «One day the communist rule in China will pass. By withholding
diplomatic recognition from Peiping, the United States seeks to hasten that passing».
8
This
denial attitude permeated deeply the oratory of the American officials and went on until
1960s.
The American strategy, though, went much further than rhetoric and isolationism, and
included actions of aggressive nature. Mainly through the CIA, Washington sponsored a
limited secret war against China, undertaking a sort of ―joint venture‖ with the Nationalists
in Taiwan. One of the most peculiar initiative assumed by the government involved the
state of Colorado: thanks to its abundance and variety of alpine environments, CIA settled
there a sort of training camp of mountain warfare for Tibetan guerrillas. These special
forces were supposed to be airdropped inside Tibet and provide and to form the core of
anti-Chinese uprising. Nevertheless, these small-scale attempts to disrupt the enemy
never managed to pose a serious threat to Beijing.
Besides that, what was even more upsetting for China was America’s overt support for
Chiang and Washington’s declared intention to recapturing the mainland. Even though
Eisenhower told to the nationalist leader not to expect American backing for such a
mission, the alarmed communist intelligentsia saw itself encircled by American-financed
anti-communist alliances, kept isolated from world trade by an American embargo and
harassed by small scale US assisted guerrillas. Therefore, they had no other choice than
rely more heavily to the Soviet Union: American hostility had a big stake in pushing China
towards soviets’ open arms. Mutual hostility fed upon itself finally leading to the result that
8
Claude Buss. China: the People’s Republic of China and Richard Nixon. San Francisco: W.H. Freeman
and Company, 1983 p.82
11
China’s dependence on Russian weapons, credits and technology grew consistently until
the end of the decade.
Ironically the fact that started the decline of the Sino-Soviet relationship was the most
delicate crisis between China and USA of this phase: in 1958, Chiang Kai Shek unilaterally
decided to deploy a large number of troops in two little island of the Taiwan Strait (Quemoy
and Matsu), partly to reassert his claim over the mainland partly to start new commando
operations. The PRC answered by making massive blockade and shelling over the two
islands. The USA never intended to intervene on order to help Chiang to restore his power
over the mainland but stated firmly that it would launch air and sea strikes whether
Chinese activities represented a threat for Taiwan. Eisenhower and Dulles later ―proposed‖
to Chiang to withdraw his troops and warned Beijing that no excuse for an armed assault
now existed.
Until the end of the 1950s, the alliance between China and Russia represented a marriage
of convenience: yet, given China’s isolation as well as vulnerability to a hostile Soviet
Union, the benefits of joining the Soviet bloc still outweighed the costs. However after
Stalin’s death, the new Russian leadership timidly started trying to improve the relations
with the USA: the fact that Moscow softened its stand toward Washington while the latter
was still keeping a hard line with Beijing, and Khrushchev failure to consult Beijing over
major innovations in Soviet foreign policy, lead Mao to take the distance from the Soviet
model and to openly challenge its biggest ally. The two communist states accused each
other of deviating from the original Marxism-Leninism and started to compete for the
influence over the non-aligned blocs of nations.
During this period, though, China was still an extremely poor agricultural country whose
leader were struggling to create a new order after more of a century of political and
economic chaos: it was not able to represent a influential role in the international arena
and, most of all, was not able to represent a serious threat for the United States. Unlike its
oft-aggressive rhetoric may have suggested, China’s actual actions were far more
moderate and usually reactive rather than proactive. On the one hand Mao proclaimed
that all the imperialist powers were nothing but ―paper tigers‖ (Zhu 2006), but on the other
hand Beijing recognized American superiority and never undertook supportive measure in
order to help any other subjugated country. The Taiwan crisis perfectly shows how double-
headed and controversial the American policy has been during the first decade after the
loss: officially America recognized the Republic of China in Taiwan as the only legitimate
12
Chinese state. In practice, Washington seemed to act with the consciousness that PRC
would not just be a passing phase.
The turnaround
During the Kennedy administration there were some slight intentions to seek contact and
approach with China, but the overall policy did not introduce relevant innovation. JFK
chose as secretary of State Dean Rusk, an official with a long and fervent hostility for
communism and China; he said that he was willing to see reduction of tension, but was not
willing to pay Peiping’s price, the abandonment of the people of Taiwan. Kennedy
administration continued the denial-line and opposed to the formal recognition of PRC and
its entrance in the United Nations. In addition to that, the president himself was a
passionate cold-warrior and pinpointed China as the source of aggression in Asia: into his
eyes, the developing countries that were unwilling to follow American model were to be
considered hostile and it was essential to contain Chinese aggression in the continent. He
tended to interpret the conflict in Vietnam as a proxy of the Beijing-Washington battle and
as a necessary commitment against the proliferation of communism. Mindful of Truman’s
label of president that lost China, he was determined not to abandon Saigon.
Lyndon Johnson fell into the same traps of his predecessor: downplaying the ultimate
essence of the Vietnam case, he viewed the Vietnam War was a proxy of the battle
Beijing-Washington and as a variable in the equation of the anti-communist expansion. As
a believer of the theory of falling dominoes, he pinpointed China as major source of
danger in South East Asia able to put in jeopardy the American presence in the continent
and the overall equilibrium of power. In addition to that, he was haunted by the nightmare
of being the first president to lose a war and the fear of being depicted as soft on
communism. In 1965, reflecting on the escalation of the Vietnam war, he told his
biographer:
«If I left the war and the communist takeover South Vietnam, then I would be seen as a
coward and my nation would be seen as an appeaser and we would both find it impossible
to accomplish anything for anybody on the entire globe. (..) And I knew that if we let the
communist aggression succeed in taking over South Vietnam there would follow in the
country an endless national debate, a mean and destructive debate, which would shatter
my Presidency, kill my administration and damage our democracy. I knew that Harry
Truman and Dean Acheson had lost effectiveness from the day the Communists took over
China. I believed that the loss of China had played a large role on the rise of John
13
McCarthy. And I knew that all these problems, taken together, were chickenshit compared
with what might happen if we lost Vietnam».
9
Despite some initiatives in easing restrictions on travel to China for American scholars and
tourists and a preliminary diplomatic contact in Warsaw, he turned out to enact a policy
that was bound to exacerbate the relationship with China.
Paradoxically, the man who provided a U-turn to the hysteria surrounding China that was
going on since 1949 was one of its main architects that contributed to shape it and that
gained a relevant stake of his political success thanks to it. Early in the 1950s he endorsed
McCarthy in accusing irresponsible diplomats for loosing China; in 1954, as vice-president
he urged Eisenhower to send troops in Vietnam; during the Taiwan crisis in 1958 he was
calling for the necessity not to surrender a single acre of territory to China; during the
presidential debate of 1960 with Kennedy he warned against Chinese expansionism (see
quotation at the beginning of the paragraph). Until he became president, he gave just little
signals of his changed attitude toward China. In October 1967, he wrote in Foreign Affairs:
«Any American policy toward Asia must come urgently to grips with the reality of China.
This does not mean, as many would simplistically have it, rushing to grant recognition to
Peking, to admit it to the United Nations and to ply it with offers of trade. (..) It does mean
recognizing the present and potential danger form Communist China, and taking
measures designed to meet that danger. (..) The world cannot be safe until China
changes. Thus our aim, to the extent that we can influence events, should be to induce
change. The way to do this is to persuade China that it must change, that it cannot satisfy
its imperial ambitions, and that its own national interest requires a turning away from
foreign adventuring and a turning inward toward the solution of its domestic problems»
10
.
The first 2 years of Nixon presidency had seen some first gestures reflecting his renewed
attitude toward Beijing; for instance in 1970 the trade restrictions were modified in order to
allow the subsidiaries of American companies abroad to sell non-strategic material to
China; travel limitations were reduced and few cultural exchanges were introduced; the
stubborn habit to refer to the Chinese capital as Peiping was finally abandoned.
The biggest catalyst igniting Sino-American distension, though, came from the forces
regulating the international arena: the ongoing deterioration of the relationship between
China and Soviet Union was altering at the same time the scenario of the mutual interest
9
Schaller, The United State and China in the Twentieth Century, pp.163
10
Nixon, Richard. Asia after Viet Nam. Foreign Affairs, October 1967 (46). P.121
14
between Beijing and Washington. In the end of the sixties the widening of the ideological
split between the two communist countries was worsened by the aggravation of territorial
controversies: China and the Soviet Union were accusing each other to illegally occupy
border territory and planning the seizure of additional land. Chinese anxiety was further
increased in 1968, when the Soviet Union invaded Czechoslovakia to restore the
orthodoxy in a country that was starting to deviate from the dogmatic tenets coming from
Moscow. In march 1969, Chinese and Soviet armed forces clashed along the course of
Ussuri river in Outer Mongolia: both nations deployed massive forces in the area and
Moscow even considered the possibility to launch a preemptive nuclear strike against
Chinese facilities. Beijing was stuck between the wrath of both superpowers while lacking
either internal resources or significant external allies. This fact made for improved relations
with Washington a vital requirement for China security. Almost as soon as Nixon took
office, Mao abandoned the more radical line within the PRC and started signaling
willingness to improve the relations with the US.
Given this set of conditions, Nixon combined his political opportunism with Henry
Kissinger’s balance of power politics: they realized how the Sino-Soviet conflict made
China more vulnerable after losing its major foreign ally. They now realized they could
gain bargaining power exploiting the Soviet threat. In contrast to the classic bipolar world,
they envisioned the possibility to give birth to a multipolar system where US, Soviet Union,
Japan and Western Europe can all have spheres of influence.
Therefore after 20 years spent pursuing the ultimate goal of containing China interfering
with its internal and foreign policy, Nixon gradually started to revert all the political (the
policy formulating staff of State Department, CIA, National Security Council had been
―trained‖ for 20 years to interfere with China’s political life) military machine (a series of
bilateral military agreements with bordering states) that had been devoted to the
containment of China. Moreover, the administration started to spread some messages of
goodwill and to ease some economic restrictions: speaking before the congress, Nixon
urged the necessity of drawing China into a constructive relationship and declared to be
ready to establish a dialogue. In a press conference he made reference to the People
Republic of China so implicitly acknowledging its legal existence. The process to reverse
twenty years of hostility went through several soft policy measures like the elimination of
all passport restrictions for Americans traveling to China. In the public diplomacy realm,
though, nothing has ever been more memorable and symbolically-effective than the so
called ―Ping Pong Diplomacy‖: as proof of willingness to collaborate, in April 1971
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