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2015 ‫מועד ספטמבר‬ - 41 - ‫ פרק ראשו ן‬- ‫ אנגלית‬

Text II (Questions 18-22)

(1) The People's Republic of China (PRC) was established in 1949. For the first two
decades of its existence, the communist PRC maintained a hostile stance towards the
United States, which it considered an "imperialist enemy of the people". The US, in
turn, was extremely suspicious and fearful of Communist China and its alliance with the

(5) Soviet Union. In the 1950s and 1960s, this rivalry escalated into outright military
engagement on the Korean and Vietnamese fronts, respectively. In both cases, China
supported communist troops who were at odds with US-backed anti-communist forces.

In the late 1960s, as China's relations with the Soviet Union became increasingly
strained, both China and the US came to realize that formal diplomatic relations could

(10) be mutually advantageous. At the 1971 World Table Tennis Championships in Nagoya,
Japan, an improbable means of breaching the divide presented itself. When Glenn
Cowan, the star of the American ping pong team, missed his team's bus, he was given a
ride by the Chinese team. Along the way, China's leading player, Zhuang Zedong, gave
Cowan a souvenir from China. The next day, photographers were on hand when Cowan

(15) reciprocated. Pictures of the two men flashed around the world. Chinese leader Mao
Zedong saw them and, recognizing the public relations potential, he decided to invite
the US table tennis team members to visit China. In April 1971, the first Americans
allowed into the PRC played a series of friendly matches with their Chinese
counterparts. The US and China subsequently initiated trade relations and in 1972,

(20) President Richard Nixon visited China – the culmination of a process that the media
dubbed "ping pong diplomacy".

Questions

18. An appropriate title for this text would be -

(1) How Richard Nixon and Mao Zedong Made History
(2) Rivalry in Sports Between the US and China
(3) Chinese-US Hostility: From 1949 to the Present
(4) Ping Pong Diplomacy: Resolving Conflict through Sports

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.‫ בלא אישור בכתב מהמרכז הארצי לבחינות ולהערכה‬- ‫ כולה או חלקים ממנה‬- ‫ או ללמדה‬,‫אין להעתיק או להפיץ בחינה זו או קטעים ממנה בכל צורה ובכל אמצעי‬