State Councilor Liu Yandong on Sunday called for more efforts to upgrade the education quality in the vast western rural area, where the economy was relatively backward.

To improve the education quality in the western provinces, especially in the rural area, would promote social harmony, coordinated development between the cities and countryside, and the long-term development of the western region, she said.

More investment should be injected into the education sector in the western rural area, to allow rural students to receive their free nine-year compulsory education and attract more outstanding teachers to serve in the countryside, she said during her visits to local schools and university campuses.

More efforts should be made to improve the teaching and boarding facilities for rural students, she said, adding teaching methods should also be improved to help students develop creative thinking.

The official also stressed the importance of education for minorities.

More efforts should be made to develop minority education so as to make contribution to the common prosperity of all nationalities, she said.

Western China covers six provinces - Gansu, Guizhou, Qinghai, Shaanxi, Sichuan, and Yunnan; one municipality, Chongqing; and three autonomous regions: Ningxia, Tibet and Xinjiang.

Yinchuan is the capital of northwest China's Ningxia Hui Autonomous Recgion.

(Xinhua News Agency?September 16, 2008)