BEIJING -- President Xi Jinping on Wednesday encouraged China's teachers to contribute more to education in poor areas, in a letter of reply to teachers from the southwest province of Guizhou.

Xi also took the chance to salute teachers nationwide on the eve of National Teachers' Day.

"Reducing poverty must begin with reducing ignorance. Therefore, giving rural children a good education is an important task in poverty relief, and also a crucial means to stop poverty being passed on between generations," he said.

"The poor regions are the bottleneck in building a moderately prosperous society by 2020," Xi wrote.

The president asked the Guizhou teachers to lead education reform in poor areas.

On Sept. 9 2014, Xi met with teachers from Guizhou who were receiving training at Beijing Normal University. The group of teachers wrote a letter to Xi.

China is the world's biggest developing country and its education service still has weaknesses. Access to education is still limited and varies between regions.

To improve education in underdeveloped regions, China has been running a training project that had benefitted 6.4 million rural teachers from central and western China by the end of 2014.