During the Cold War the United States used table tennis as an unlikely tool to help improve its relations with communist China.

The Holy See has embarked on a more elevated version of “ping-pong diplomacy”. Two art exhibitions will open in Beijing and the Vatican Museums in March next year; 40  items will be exchanged, with one show opening in the Forbidden City and the other in the Vatican’s ethnological museums, a lesser known part of its cultural treasury but holding tens of thousands of priceless artefacts from all over the world.