Cui is only one of this year's college graduates across China who responded to the call of the government to work in the western region on a voluntary basis for one to two years.

"What we can do for people living in the western region is limited, but we bring to them a kind of spirit and hope," he said.

"I do hope that more college graduates will join us and I hope all children in western China can study at school."

The Central Committee of Communist Youth League of China and the Ministry of Education jointly launched a program early this month to recruit up to 6,000 young volunteers from college graduates to move to the west of the country and help develop impoverished regions.

The graduates will be sent to impoverished western regions to work in such fields as education, health, agricultural science, poverty reduction and youth work management.

After their volunteer terms, graduates will be free to choose whether to continue to work in the west or seek opportunities in other developed regions of the country.

In Jilin University, based in Changchun, capital of northeast China's Jilin Province, 33 more graduates like Cui had signed agreements to work in western region by Jun. 16, and more graduates had expressed their willingness to go west.

A graduate surnamed Wang from Changchun Polytechnic University said the program provided more choices for college graduates in seeking jobs, and the program reduced pressure on employment.

Statistics show that 2.12 million college students are graduating this year, 620,000 more than last year when Chinese institutions of higher learning began to expand student enrollment.

As an encouragement, the central government has drafted many preferential policies for volunteer graduates who would go west.

For example, they will be awarded allowances for living expenses while working in western regions, and they enjoy preference for employment by government organs and for continuing their post-graduate studies after finishing their voluntary service.

Cui Xiaofei will return to Jilin University for post-graduate studies after one-year voluntary service in Guizhou.

As a measure to serve the western development strategy, the program had found a new way to provide intellectual support for the western regions, said Zhang Yong, a member of the Secretariat of the CYLC Central Committee.

The western regions are badly in need of skills as professionals there account for only 15.5 percent of the country'stotal, while the population accounts for 28.8 percent of China's population.

China launched a strategy to develop its economically underdeveloped western regions in late 1999.

(Xinhua News Agency June 24, 2003)