Despite all this, China remained isolated in the bridge community. In 1980, the HKCBA had the bright idea of the Hong Kong Inter-City to help bring the Chinese into the international bridge arena. The first event contained about 12 teams, including China but not Taiwan. Hong Kong won.

The next year, the HKCBA went to great length to try and bring Taiwan into the event. Patrick Choy, Vice Chairman of the HKCBA and Chairman of the Organizing Committee that year, visited Taiwan no less than four times for this purpose. He made the case that the consequence of no contact is isolation. The Taiwan bridge players, who were amongst the best in the world at the time, were very keen to play but they needed approval from their government.

This was no easy feat because the Government policy at the time was no contact. To be more precise, they could not compete with China directly, only indirectly. For instance, they could run in a 100 metre race but they couldn’t wrestle each other. So Choy was required to show that bridge was not a direct competition. He cleverly made the case that the person directly opposite you at bridge is your partner, and that your real opponents are the players in your seats at the other table. In other words, bridge is indirect competition. Another smart aspect of the HKCBA initiative was to make it Inter-City, not Inter-country. This diluted the sense of nationalism. Presumably, the Taiwanese president, Chiang Ching Kuo accepted this and in a great step forward both China and Taiwan took part in the 1981 Inter-City.

Keen to avoid politicizing the event, China sent one team from Shanghai but none from Beijing. Jing means capital and that might have proved controversial.

Taiwan was keen to win so they sent two teams, which included most of their leading players. However, the pressure that was undoubtedly placed on them to do well perhaps affected their performance and one team was knocked out in the round robin and the other was defeated by China in the semi final. Hong Kong defeated China in the final.

To avoid a swirl of spectators at the table, the HKCBA provided a vu-graph, a rare commodity anywhere in the bridge world at that time. Claude Rodrigue from England was brought in at the last moment as the commentator. Later in 1981, China joined the World Bridge Federation.

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Deng Xiaping was born in 1904, thus we are now in the 100th year since he was born. He was the chief architect of the Chinese economic reform and modernisation. He was elected as the Honary Chairman of the CBA in the mid-80s, a position he held until he died in 1997.

Patrick Choy is a member of the Chinese Peoples Political Consultative Committee, the Upper House of the Chinese Parliament. He is the first multinational Corporation executive to be so honoured. He has recently retired as a Corporate Vice President of the US communication giant, Motorola. He has been the Vice President of the World Bridge Federation since 1998. He has long been a driving force in the HKCBA and he has occupied many offices. He now lives in Singapore.

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