Building the Landscape of Sports Diplomacy: R. William Jones Cup Intercontinental Basketball Tournament on Formosa Island in the Cold War Era

Abstract

The intertwined landscape of physical skills, political power, and diplomatic strategies in the Cold War narrative is always hidden in the spatial configuration and ceremonial symbolic layout of the main venues of international events from where it extends outward. The Cold War historicity of the Taipei William Jones Cup is a case in point. The micro-history of sports diplomacy from the narration of diplomatic history archives, collected by the Academia Historica in Taipei, illustrates that sports diplomacy can also play a key role in the formal history of diplomacy—the establishment of diplomacy, national identity, and regime legitimacy resort to the service of sports. The discussion includes documentary and media discourses related to the Cup, such as spatial power, banal nationalism, symbolic ritual, and identity. Consequently, the Taipei Men’s and Women’s Jones Cup promoted the development of basketball in Taiwan and Asia, created a platform for activating people’s diplomacy, and provided Chiang’s regime with a temporary place to survive the Cold War.