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China to go west with education
HONG KONG, China (CNN) -- This year China will try and recruit thousands of college and university graduates to teach in its poorer western provinces. Officials are banking on a good response this summer to its three-year-old "go west" program, as many fresh graduates are likely to face a hard time in the job market. "College students will have to face a tough challenge in finding jobs this year with the combined influence of the increasing number of graduates and the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS)," said Yuan Guiren, Vice Minister of Education told the official Xinhua news agency. The volunteer program was jointly announced by the Central Committee of the Communist Youth League of China (CYLC) and the Ministry of Education. The program to develop the twelve impoverished provinces in western China -- a crusade known as 'xijin' in Chinese -- has already been plugged to corporations. Now Beijing hopes that some of its class of 2003 -- 2.12 million graduates -- will move west as educators and developers on a yearly basis. This summer the program will try to recruit 30,000 from the rank and file. Officials say it will be an easy task since there are 620,000 more graduates than last year due to swelling student enrollment. The graduates will work as rural teachers, medical workers, agricultural technicians, as well as in poverty alleviation and youth for one or two years. "As a measure to serve the western development strategy, the program has found a new way to provide intellectual support for the western regions," Zhao Yong, a senior official of the central committee said at a press conference. The volunteers get free accommodation and daily living subsidies from the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Personnel, besides other preferential employment polices for graduates. After their volunteer terms of one to two years they will be free to continue working in the west or move back east. There is hope that many will stay and tackle a region that is badly in need of skills and professionals. "The acute poverty in the western regions appears even starker in contrast to the boom taking place in the east, " President of the World Bank, James D. Wolfensohn said on his visit to the western areas last year. "The World Bank looks forward to supporting efforts of the government to alleviate poverty in the western provinces," he reiterated. Currently, international donor organizations and governments sponsor a number of "go west" development projects in the hope of shortening the gap between the poorer western areas and the richer eastern seaboard. Although the ambitious program was announced more than three years ago, the number of companies and individuals moving to the poor and relatively inaccessible provinces such as Xinjiang, Tibet, Qinghai, Gansu and Guizhou has been minimal. Development of provinces with high concentrations of ethnic minorities such as Tibet, Xinjiang, Yunnan, Guanxi and Inner Mongolia is also considered key to maintaining political stability in China.
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