CRI听力:President Xi's Speech at UK-China Business Summit Receives Positive Feedback

Several topics have been covered in President Xi's speech such as trade opportunities provided by the "One Belt, One Road" initiative as well as the promotion of tourism between the two countries.

Lord Mayor of the City of London Alderman Alan Yarrow spoke highly of the speech.

"I mean it showed a real partnership in looking towards the future and the 'golden era'. It was fantastically cooperative; it was helpful; it was supportive of all our private businesses to make sure they collaborate more in the future, helping both the Chinese people and the British people."

Yarrow also praised the "One Belt,One Road" initiative as a way of rejoining the East with Europe, saying it's a wonderful illustration of how to get the cooperation and the infrastructure in place to make sure that global trade blossoms in the future.

For his part, acting director-general for UK Trade and Investment, Michael Charlton, said the initiative will bring many opportunities to the UK.

"There's a need to develop infrastructure along the 'Belt and Road' and the Chinese President Xi Jinping has clearly recognized that. And where we think exciting is that the UK can work with China in terms of third country investment. So we have many fantastic construction, engineering, project management firms that can help in that. And of course, we also have the financial companies to enable that to happen. One of the reasons, of course, that the UK was the first country to come forward and support the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank."

In his speech, President Xi said China will import more than 10 trillion U.S. dollars of goods over the next five years and that more than 500 million Chinese tourists will travel abroad during that time.

Discussing economic issues, Arnold Donald, president and CEO of Carnival Cruise Line, expressed his confidence in the Chinese economy and said he is eager to explore the Chinese market in the coming year.

"We expect China to be the largest cruise market in the world over time and we've seen tremendous growth. In fact, we are going to grow our capacity 58 percent next year in China and then we are bringing an additional two brands - our AIDA brand, our German brand, and our Carnival brand from the U.S. - in 2017."

For CRI, I'm Xie Cheng.