Chinese President Xi Jinping on Wednesday sent greetings to teachers and education workers across the country ahead of China's 36th Teachers' Day, which falls on September 10 every year.

In the face of the sudden outbreak of COVID-19, teachers across the country braved difficulties, continued working and made important contributions to fighting the pandemic by dedicating themselves to the world's largest-scale online teaching, Xi said. 

Teachers across the country are also helping to prevent poverty from being passed on to the next generation, Xi said, noting the importance of this year's goal of securing a decisive victory in building a moderately prosperous society in all respects and achieve poverty alleviation. 

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He hopes teachers will bear in mind their mission of cultivating talent for the Party and the nation, develop teaching methods for the new era, and make more contributions to nurturing all-round socialist builders and successors. 

Urging more care for teachers, Xi stressed the importance of making teaching the most esteemed and admired profession in society and finding better ways to coordinate the COVID-19 response with educational work.

There are 17.32 million full-time teachers at different levels in China. Through large-scale online teaching, they met a variety of learning needs for 280 million students across the country amid the COVID-19 pandemic, advancing the revolutionary reform in teaching methods. 

Meanwhile, teachers working in rural areas and the most remote and impoverished regions have made their contributions to the country's mission of ending poverty and building a moderately prosperous society in all respects. 

From 2013 to 2019, the central government's budgetary spending amounted to 13.5 billion yuan (1.9 billion U.S. dollars) on training programs, during which time 19.8 billion yuan in grants and subsidies were provided to rural teachers. 

China has a long tradition of respecting and honoring teachers. The modern Teachers' Day was established by the Chinese government in 1985 as an official holiday that recognizes the important work of Chinese educators. 

On this day, students, alongside the whole community, express their appreciation to teachers nationwide.

(With input from Xinhua)