The visit by the US table tennis team to Beijing in April 1971 is widely regarded as a key turning point in US-China relations, culminating in rapprochement when then US President Richard Nixon visited the Chinese capital less than a year later.

Less widely known, however, is that ping-pong diplomacy also played a role, that same year, in nascent Singapore-China ties when the Republic sent a team in November to the first Afro-Asian Table Tennis Friendship Invitational Tournament.