Chinese table-tennis player Zhuang Zedong, who had an instrumental role in the so-called ping-pong diplomacy that led to a thaw in US-China relations in the 1970s, has died aged 73.

Zhuang’s gift of a silk portrait to US player Glenn Cowan in Japan in 1971 triggered events that led to a US team touring China in April that year.

In 1972, Richard Nixon became the first US president to visit communist China.

The visit opened China to the outside world and shifted the Cold War balance.