The Chinese government's call for college graduates to work in the west region on a voluntary basis has attracted 43,763 applicants from across the country.
The applicants included 31,453 recent graduates from three-year colleges, 12,276 graduates from regular colleges and universities, and 34 post-graduate students.
The Central Committee of the 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 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, for one to two years.
After their voluntary terms, graduates will be free to choose whether to continue to work in the west or seek opportunities in other regions of the country.
As the number of applicants has far exceeded the scheduled recruitment, the office in charge of the application work closed applications before the scheduled date of June 30.
The final list of volunteers will be announced around July 1.
The west regions lag behind other regions, especially the southern and eastern coastal areas of China. To boost the local economy, China launched a strategy to develop the western regions in late 1999.
The volunteer program is widely regarded as having provided a new way to provide intellectual support to the western regions and to serve the western development strategy.
(Xinhua News Agency June 27, 2003)
