Improbable Diplomats: How Ping-Pong Players, Musicians, and Scientists Remade US–China Relations Pete Millwood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023. xvi + 336 pp. £47.99; $59.99 (hbk). ISBN 9781108837439 Yue Du – CORRIGENDUM

Abstract

Amidst rising tensions between the United States and the People ’ s Republic of China, Pete Millwood ’ s new book is a timely contribution that reminds us about the challenges the two countries faced and the successes they made in managing their engagement in the past. Like many other scholarly works, Millwood ’ s book focuses on the formative years of US – PRC relations in the 1970s. This book distinguishes itself from mainstream diplomatic history, however, by looking beyond “ great men ” and concentrating on non-state actors and “ people-to-people ” exchanges outside formal diplomacy. The main source base is the archives of two US non-governmental organizations: the National Committee on United States – China Relations (NCUSCR) and the Committee on Scholarly Communication with the People ’ s Republic of China (CSCPRC). The author complements these newly available documents with records drawn from nearly 20 archives from across the United States and China. He argues that cultural and scientific exchange visits between Americans and Chinese before the normalization of US – PRC relations not only recon-nected these two peoples but also exerted a powerful influence on the diplomatic relationship between the two governments. This book reveals how formal diplomacy conducted by Mao, Zhou, Nixon and Kissinger, and informal ones by athletes, artists and scholars were deeply connected and mutually constitutive. The six chapters in the main body of the book are preceded by a chapter-long prologue that examines the patterns