China's table tennis legend Zhuang Zedong, who played a key role in initiating the famous ping-pong diplomacy with the US leading to the President Nixon's ice breaking visit to Beijing in 1972, died in Beijing today. He was 73. Zhuang had been suffering from cancer and his condition grew worse last July and had developed complications from liver failure. Zhuang, who won a horde of events in the 1960s.