Forty-five years ago, Cold War tensions between the United States and communist China were lessened thanks to an unlikely diplomatic tool: ping-pong. On April 10, 1971, the U.S. table tennis team arrived in China for a 10-day visit, becoming the first group of Americans in over 20 years to get a peek behind the “Bamboo Curtain.” 

Mao Zedong was said to have been moved to tears when he watched an early performance of "The White-Haired Girl," an opera created to meet his call for rousing revolutionary art. And under President Xi Jinping, a revival is on the road, reinvented once more to appeal to a Communist Party leader's stringently ideological tastes.

The most widely watched television show on earth, China’s New Year Gala, attracted some 690 million viewers last week to variety show that was criticized as “discriminatory” and “spectacularly misogynistic” -- peppered with jokes at the expense of women.

Xi’s Maoist vision for control over Chinese art is at odds with China’s quest to expand its cultural influence abroad.

2014 has already arrived in the People's Republic of China and, while the occasion is celebrated far less there than here in the United States, China's 1.3 billion people will enjoy a public holiday on January 1st. Following a busy, intriguing 2013, the break is welcome: The first year of Xi Jinping's stewardship was an eventful one in the country, and as 2014 begins China faces a number of issues that, in the aggregate, pose a threat to the country's stability.

December 26 is the birthday of Mao Zedong, and 2013 was a particularly important celebration. This year marked the 120th anniversary of Mao’s birth. In celebration, Xi Jinping and Li Keqiang visited Mao’s mausoleum in Beijing and also attended a symposium on Mao at the Great Hall of the People. At the symposium, Xi promised to raise the banner of Mao Zedong Thought “forever.” However, Xi also cautioned that Mao, like other “revolutionary leaders” were “not gods, but human beings.”

Today was the 120th anniversary of Mao Zedong’s birth, and as the event is celebrated in grand style in Beijing and around China, images of the Chairman are even more ubiquitous than usual this week: A rumored $2.5 billion was invested in celebrations in honor of the figure whose portrait watches over Tiananmen Square and is fastened to the gate of the Forbidden City.

China's leaders bowed three times before a statue of Mao Zedong on the 120th anniversary of his birth Thursday in carefully controlled celebrations that also sought to uphold the market-style reforms he would have opposed. The approach underscores the delicate balancing act the Communist Party leadership — installed last year — has to perform in managing perceptions of Mao's legacy.