Chinese President Hu Jintao's speech on New Year's Eve calling for joint efforts for world peace and development has drawn positive comments from the international community.

Hu said China would continue to develop friendly exchanges with other countries and positively participate in international cooperation on global issues.

He also called for the acceleration of China's economic restructuring and for more efforts in ensuring people's livelihoods.

China, he said, would continue to balance maintaining steady and relatively fast economic growth with adjusting its economic structures and managing inflation expectations.

Rangarirai Shoko, editor-in-chief of New Ziana, Zimbabwe's official news agency, said Hu's speech, with its proposal for peaceful development, was in line with both of the world's development trend and the benefits of the African people.

Mohamad el-Saket, former Arab League ambassador to China, spoke highly of the Chinese economy in 2011, saying China had achieved stable and healthy economic growth amid the deteriorating global economic slowdown, especially in the United States, Europe and the Middle East.

He also expressed hope for further development and greater achievements in China in the new year.

Nour Suleiman, chief economic editor of Manifesto, a newspaper of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), said more people in the Arab country were in favor of expanding economic and trade cooperation with China, the second largest world economy.

Bloomberg, a major U.S. multinational corporation for business news and financial information, highlighted Hu's comments on balancing growth and inflation.

"We will continue to manage well the relationship between stable and relatively quick economic growth, structural adjustment and inflation. Global interdependence is deepening while instability and uncertainty in the world's economy's revival is increasing," it quoted Hu as saying in the speech.

Wu Huiqiu, president of the Washington-based National Association for China's Peaceful Unification, said in an interview with Xinhua that the principles of "peaceful reunification" and "one country, two systems" that Hu stressed in his speech, highlighted China would continue to consolidate and develop cross-Strait relations and peaceful development.

Wu Jiansheng, secretary general of a writers association in the Philippines, said: "President Hu's speech shows China's confidence in further consolidating the good momentum of development of the 12th Five-Year Plan, promoting social and economic development and increasing the wellbeing of all the Chinese people."

"What the government does will make greater contributions to peace and development of the humanbeings," he said.

Sami Al Qamzi, a senior economic official in Dubai, a UAE city and emirate, expressed his confidence in China's ability to maintain its economic growth in 2012.

He said Dubai hoped to share experience with China to achieve common development.

He also called for mutually beneficial cooperation and joint efforts between both sides in a bid to overcome the current global economic woes.