A senior Chinese government official has asked regional governments to accelerate the building of the modern distance education network at rural schools in a bid to raise the quality of rural education.

"Speeding up construction of the project is an important way to provide equal opportunities of education and raise the quality of rural education," said Chinese State Councillor Chen Zhili.

"It is also a major approach to boosting development and harmony in rural areas and therefore has far-reaching significance," Chen said at a symposium on distance education at rural schools held in Zhangye City of northwest China's Gansu Province on weekends.

The project of modern distance education in rural primary and secondary schools, initiated in 2003, aims to build 110,000 stations for playing instructional compact discs, 384,000 stations for receiving instructional programs from satellites and 37,500 computer classrooms in rural areas by 2007, benefiting 160 million rural primary and secondary students.

So far, 78,000 disc playing stations, 53,700 satellite receiving stations and 7,504 computer classrooms have been built.

Chen underlined the importance of promoting the application of the distance education system, saying that's a crucial link of the project.

"Application results are the major yardsticks to judge the success of the project," Chen said.

China's rural schools are far inferior to their urban counterparts in access to good teachers, good teaching materials and information about the latest developments in the outside world.

Addressing the symposium, Chen urged all localities to make full use of the distance education platform and apply it for a variety of purposes, which should also include dissemination of science and technology and cultural information and the education of rural members of the Communist Party of China.