US experts call speech 'positive', 'balanced'

US-based China watchers spoke favorably of the speech by General Secretary Xi Jinping at Wednesday's opening ceremony of the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China.

Cheng Li, director of the John L. Thornton China Center of the Brookings Institution, said his key takeaway from the report is the redefinition of the new era and new challenge.

Xi, general secretary of the CPC Central Committee as well as the nation's president, spoke about the principal contradiction facing Chinese society as being between unbalanced and inadequate development and the people's ever-growing needs for a better life. Previously, the contradiction had been described as being "between the evergrowing material and cultural needs of the people and backward social production".