Chinese President Xi Jinping has called on teachers to provide good guidance to students, as he greeted teachers across the country ahead of China's Teachers' Day that falls on Friday this year.

Xi, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, made the remarks in a reply letter to representatives of model teaching units named after late geophysicist Huang Danian, a professor at Jilin University. Huang helped China make advances in deep-earth exploration.

A good teacher should be one who has both profound knowledge to share and moral integrity to lead, said Xi, urging model teachers, along with all their colleagues in colleges and universities across China, to continue to cultivate their virtue, focus on teaching and keep on innovating.

Xi said teachers shall provide good guidance to students and nurture them into capable young people who have good and all-round moral, intellectual, physical and aesthetical grounding and are well-prepared to join the socialist cause.

Following Xi's important instruction on learning from Huang's exemplary deeds, the Ministry of Education in 2017 started to identify and honor model teaching units. The first 201 such units were selected from 200 colleges and universities.