Chinese college students set out for China's rural areas on Monday to publicize "new socialist countryside" policies and help rural residents improve their lives in the annual summer vacation volunteer campaign.

More than 1,000 college students attended the inauguration ceremony held in the Beijing University of Science and Technology.

The program, jointly organized by the Department of Publicity of the CPC Central Committee, the Ministry of Education and several other organizations, drew more than 200,000 volunteer groups from around 1,000 colleges and universities this year. These groups will spread to around 10,000 villages.

"I hope you will all do good deeds for the rural residents and in the process improve your life skills and build up your character," said Ouyang Jian, deputy head of the Department of Publicity of the CPC Central Committee, at the inauguration ceremony.

There are 600 major volunteer groups this year, with 100 teams devoted to publicizing government policies, 100 publicizing the "socialist concept of honor and disgrace", 100 providing technical assistance to farmers, 100 giving lectures to rural students, 100 providing medical and health care and 100 teams of PhD students offering advice on local economic development, according to the activity plan.

For the last decade, the government has been organizing college students to make field trips to the countryside during the summer vacation, which generally starts at the beginning of July and lasts for around one and a half months.

A circular issued by the organizers said the activity is "an effective way" to improving the ideological and political education of college students.

"It is also an important measure to allow college students to play a role in the 'new countryside construction," says the circular.

The government seeks to promote rural development with the "building of a socialist new countryside" program, which aims to improve agricultural production, living standards and public administration in the rural areas.

(Xinhua News Agency July 11, 2006)