Assistant Secretary Hill's Remarks

And it is great to see the American Consulate, the members of the American community, the American Chamber, so many sponsors, our friends from the Chinese authorities including the police authorities who helped organize things. We see the people from the FAO here, it is really a team effort, I think, that we can be here together.

The earthquake in the Sichuan Province is an earthquake that will be remembered for many years, for many decades, there will be a great deal of need for help for those people, and that need will be felt not only today but for many years to come.

It is a great human tragedy but it is also a human tragedy that I think has helped bring America and China closer together. After all one of the great American tragedies, great American earthquakes, took place just a little over one hundred years ago in San Francisco. And that also affected the Chinese community there at the time.

So today we will all walk together and I think we need to continue to work together and be very close together as we look for ways to help the people who have suffered so much from this. So thank you very much and I look forward to getting to meet many of you as we walk on the route. Thank you very much.