President Xi Jinping delivers a speech during a welcome banquet jointly hosted by Washington State government and friendly communities in Seattle, the United States, Sept 22, 2015. [Photo/Xinhua]

SEATTLE -- Business leaders, scholars and experts who attended a banquet in Seattle on Tuesday in honor of visiting Chinese President Xi Jinping applauded his speech at the event.

Constance W. Rice, a regent of the Seattle-based University of Washington, lauded Xi's speech as outstanding, saying that Xi really made it very clear that it's important to have mutual respect, mutual understanding between China and the United States.

Xi's forward-thinking ideas in terms of people-to-people exchanges, including the exchange of 50,000 young students with the United States, were very innovative, Rice said after the banquet.

Rice also appreciated Xi's real grasp of humanities, saying Xi's quotes in many areas like Ernest Hemingway and Martin Luther King indicated that "this is a president that has many many important layers of humanity."

Geoff Otterman, a senior executive of British multinational company Johnson Matthey, which has major operations in the United States, was impressed by Xi's call for cooperation between countries, saying cooperation is highly important to the overall economic growth, not only of the United States and China, but also of the entire world.

Otterman said that Xi talked about his personal life and background, how he came from a poor place and how he wants to bring the standard of life up for all the people in China.

Douglas Paal, vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said that Xi's speech in Seattle directly addressed many of the questions on the minds of American officials and observers.

Robert Daly, director of the Kissinger Institute on China and the United States at the Woodrow Wilson Center, said Xi was a fine public speaker, relaxed and confident.

Daly said that Xi didn't employ any humor, but managed to humanize himself a bit in American eyes by talking about his American studies reading list.

Daly said that Xi seemed serious throughout, but also displayed a good deal of charm.