 In January 1970, the Chinese invited the American ping-pong team to tour China, initiating an era of "ping-pong diplomacy".In 1971, Zhou Enlai met secretly with President Nixon's security advisor, Henry Kissinger, who had flown to China to prepare for a meeting between Richard Nixon and Mao Zedong.During the course of these meetings, the United States agreed to allow the transfer of American money to China (presumably from relatives in the United States), to allow American-owned ships to conduct trade with China (under foreign flags), and to allow Chinese exports into the United States for the first time since the Korean War.