Students at a primary school in Lianyungang, Jiangsu province, hug their teacher on Wednesday ahead of Teachers' Day, which falls on Thursday. [Zhang Zhengyou/Asia News Photo]

BEIJING -- President Xi Jinping, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, has sent greetings to teachers and workers in education circles across the country ahead of China's Teachers' Day that falls on Sept 10.

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 epidemic by dedicating themselves to the world's largest-scale online teaching, Xi said.

Teachers across the country devoted their love and wisdom to stopping poverty from being passed on to the next generation, Xi said, noting this year as the time to secure a decisive victory in building a moderately prosperous society in all respects and achieve the goal of poverty alleviation.

He expressed his hope that teachers will bear in mind their mission of cultivating talent for the Party and the state, 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 better coordinating the COVID-19 response with educational work.

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

Meanwhile, teachers working in rural areas as well as in 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.

Xinhua contributed to this story.