BEIJING -- A joint effort by China and the United States to fight cancer may open door for the "Ping-Pong Diplomacy" of new era, former Australia prime minister Kevin Rudd said on Saturday, according to Forbes.

"Given all that's going wrong in the US-China relationship, we should turn cancer collaboration between China and the United States into the Ping-Pong Diplomacy of the 21st century," Rudd said at a global online healthcare summit organized by Forbes China.

If the exchange of table tennis players between the two countries could lead to a historic thaw in bilateral relations in the 1970s, then "we can do something similar now," he said.

Rudd added that the fight against cancer "cuts right across political and ideological divides into people's lives," which makes the collaboration between the two countries more hopeful.