China will continue to promote thenine-year compulsory education in rural areas, said Chinese Minister of Education Zhou Ji here Thursday.

Zhou said at a press conference that 8 percent of China's western and central areas do not have access to compulsory education. China will make efforts to change the situation throughprojects such as building rural boarding schools and setting up modern distance education.

China has conducted tax reform in rural areas in recent years, and will further reduce and exempt from agriculture tax, which will greatly encourage the development of compulsory education in rural areas, Zhou said.

China will further putting into place the policies on providingfinancial aid to students from the poor families, releasing them from fees of textbooks and incidental expenses and providing them with living subsidy, Zhou noted.

China has allocated free textbooks to 24 million poor students from rural areas since 2004, and will try to further provide financial aid to them by 2007, he said.

China basically achieved the goal of popularizing the nine-yearcompulsory education in 2000, but a large gap in the education situation between China's rural and urban areas still exists.

"China will continue to make compulsory education in rural areas a top priority within the overall education work," Zhou stressed.