President Xi Jinping's speech in Seattle on Tuesday has been widely applauded by US-based opinion leaders.

Cheng Li, director of the John L. Thornton China Center of Brookings Institution, said it was an excellent speech that addressed all the issues of concerns for an American audience.

Xi's speech covered a wide range of issues from China's relations with the US and cyber security to the economic situation and global challenges.

"Addressing all these issues is very important because the audience is very, very sophisticated. They have concerns and worry," Li told China Daily.

"It's a brilliant use of China's situation and his understanding of American society," said Li, referring to Xi's frequent quotes of Mark Twain, Ernest Hemingway and Dr Martin Luther King, Jr.

Li, who was in the audience on Tuesday, said the confidence Xi demonstrated is very impressive and that confidence was "contagious - influencing the people in the audience and making them more confident about China's economic reforms, and the Chinese leadership's determination to continue to improve and open China's market."

Li chatted with many people, mainly businessmen and former US government officials, after Xi's speech.

"They all thought it was an excellent speech. That's really quite significant," Li said.

"I think this is the most well-received speech by far," he said, recalling some previous Chinese leaders' speeches he had attended.

Don Bonker, a former US Congressman from Washington State, also attended the event Tuesday evening in Seattle. He said the speech was well organized and resonated well.

"Overall, President Xi gave a statesmanlike presentation with personal touches, emphasizing the right issues and laying the groundwork for his Washington, DC, visit. In Seattle it was mostly about investment-slash-trade, in the other Washington more about policy-slash-politics," he said.

Former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, now president of the Asia Society Policy Institute, called Xi's speech in Seattle a "remarkable" one that reflected "a conciliatory embrace of the American people and its tradition".

"What I find quite remarkable about the speech is rather than what we've often seen from Chinese political leaders in the past, who preferred to speak in lofty generalities about the world as it might be in a utopian future full of peace, development, and enlightenment, this is very much a nuts and bolts speech about things that are currently irritating the relationship and he's demonstrating to the people of America that he understands that. He's demonstrating that it's necessary to respond to those concerns," Rudd said at an Asia Society luncheon Wednesday.

Melanie Hart, director for China policy at the Center for American Progress, said she was happy to hear President Xi directly addressing key American concerns.

"President Xi's willingness to bring up difficult issues proactively on the first day of his US trip suggests that he has arrived willing to engage in frank discussions with American citizens and officials. That bodes well for the ability of our two nations to address differences in a constructive way," Hart said.