BEIJING, Jan. 1 (Xinhua) -- The international community has praised Chinese President Xi Jinping's New Year speech delivered on Tuesday, saying that China's development benefits people, and giving thumbs up to China's commitment to world peace and common development.

Kenneth Quinn, president of the World Food Prize Foundation and former U.S. ambassador to Cambodia, said he was impressed by China's high-quality development and its achievements in poverty alleviation that Xi mentioned in the speech.

"The impressive statistics on the continued drop in poverty levels in China continues to be the most extraordinary hallmark of the recent decades of China's transformative economic transformation," Quinn noted.

London Mayor Sadiq Khan said Xi's pledge to promote common development will benefit his city's partnership with China.

"I've seen for myself that the fantastic contribution made to London success by Chinese businessmen and women, Chinese tourists, students and other visitors to our great city," he said, hoping for a further strengthening of bilateral cooperation and friendship.

Xi's New Year speech was "comprehensive and confident," said Robert Lawrence Kuhn, chairman of the Kuhn Foundation.

"I have been long impressed by President Xi's assertion for China to truly be a 'moderately prosperous society in all respects,'" he said, adding that he was also impressed by Xi's remarks that "no matter how busy I was, I spent time visiting people in the countryside."

Brian Lantz, representative of the Schiller Institute in Houston, spoke highly of "the simple humanity that shines through in the president's speech."

"The mention of the letters he has received -- and to which he responded to -- from fellow Chinese citizens of all walks of life," and "the touching acknowledgment of ... ordinary people living extraordinary lives" in Xi's New Year speech impressed him a lot, Lantz added.

Noting Xi's words on poverty alleviation in China, former Italian Ambassador to China Alberto Bradanini said that "in the light of the success achieved by China, all countries aspiring to exit from their underdevelopment should look at the Chinese experience."

Francesco Maringio, president of the Italy-China Association for the Promotion of the Silk Road, said that he was impressed by Xi's remarks that "no matter how busy I was, I spent time visiting people in the countryside."

"The message is clear: the needs and dreams of every Chinese come above all any other obligation," Maringio noted.

Xi highlighted that China has "friends in every corner of the world" in the New Year speech, said Varaprasad Sekhar Dolla, a professor of Chinese studies at India's Jawaharlal Nehru University.

The professor said that the Chinese government is trying to expand the number of friends across the world through win-win cooperation, which is "a very positive development."