120,000 Chinese university students volunteer to serve in underdeveloped western regions

By Wang Qi Source:Global Times Published: 2019/7/28 18:43:40

Volunteers from Nankai University take pictures at a high school in Altay Prefecture, Northwest China's Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. Photo: Courtesy of Wang Xu



Nearly 120,000 Central and East China college students have applied for about 10,000 openings on the expanding Volunteer for West China project, China Youth Daily reported on Wednesday. 

The West Project was launched in 2003 by governmental authorities including China's Ministry of Education and Ministry of Finance, and the Central Committee of Communist Youth League.

It has been carried out annually since 2003 and aims at recruiting fresh college graduates and postgraduates willing to volunteer their service in the remote and underdeveloped western regions of China for one to three years. 

Beijing will pony up subsidies of 30,000 to 40,000 yuan ($4,361-$5,815) per person this year for the students who go to western regions, a staff member at the project office told the Global Times on Wednesday. He asked not to be named.

Increased participation 

According to its official introduction, the project serves education, agriculture, public healthcare and primary-level social management. 

"There is a trend of increasing year by year in terms of the number of applicants and participants," said the staff member.  

He vehemently denied the program was a form of government welfare for college applicants.

"Policies such as 10 extra exam points, preferential treatment in postgraduate entrance exams, tuition subsidies and student loan subsidies are not the key factors in a student's passion. Those policies remain the same as those in 2003 when we started the project." 

Student volunteers are more likely adults with a stronger sense of social responsibility willing to experience a different way of life, he noted.  

Some 105 volunteers from Beijing universities departed on July 19 and 516 undergraduate volunteers set off from Central China's Henan Province for West China on July 22, China Youth Daily reported on Wednesday. 

More than 290,000 volunteers served West China in the last 16 years. 

In 2018, 2,160 out of 18,300 student volunteers chose to remain in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region and Tibet Autonomous Region after their service expired, China Youth Daily reported.

Twisted ankle

"We arrived at Urumqi on July 28, 2017, then we moved to northern Xinjiang's Altay Prefecture, where I taught biology in a local high school for a year," Wang Xu, a former volunteer and a postgraduate student at Nankai University in Tianjin, told the Global Times on Wednesday. 

Every citizen should do something beneficial for their country and society instead of just benefiting from it, Wang noted. 

Contributing to society is also a good way of developing oneself, he believed.

"Our accommodation was free and we received more than a 2,000 yuan ($290.6) monthly subsidy," he said.

"I can feel local people's love and there are a lot of happy times we spent together during the holidays," Wang said. 

"I remember once I twisted my ankle playing soccer with my student, they saved up money and bought me an ointment." 

It was "a meaningful project," Wang said. "Altay is my second hometown now."

"I would definitely recommend the project to other students who are qualified… and I am planning to go back to Xinjiang this summer holiday."
Newspaper headline: Go West, young fellow


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