I thank the members of the 3rd Wing, the men and women of the Air Force, the Army, the Navy, the Marines, the Coast Guard, and the National Guard, all of whom make up the Alaska Command. Tomorrow, Hillary and I and our party will arrive in Xian for the first state visit to China, as Congressman Hamilton said, by an American President this decade. The American people are taking a special interest in this trip, just as they did when President Nixon first went to China a quarter century ago. I thought it would be important for me to spend a few moments speaking to you, who give so much to the security of our country every day, about why I am going. Let's start with some basic facts.
China is the world's most populous nation.
It is growing by the size of our total population every 20 years. It borders more than one dozen countries in one of the most challenging regions on Earth. Its economy has grown an average of 10 percent every year for the past 20 years. It has a large military, a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council, sophisticated industrial and technological capabilities. Soon, it will overtake the United States as the world's largest emitter of the greenhouse gases that are doing so much to warm our planet.