China has 29.5 million registered volunteers, the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Youth League (CCYL) said in Beijing on Friday, which was the 23rd International Volunteer Day.

More than 380 million people have done nearly 8 trillion hours of volunteer work since a youth voluntary activity drive was launched by the CCYL 15 years ago, the committee said at a celebration here.

Preliminary statistics indicate that more than 5 million volunteers worked for Sichuan quake relief, and more than 1.7 million volunteers took part in the Olympics.

He Ziding, a college student from the southwest China's Sichuan Province, took part in quake relief and the Olympics as a volunteer.

He told Xinhua he arrived three days after the May 12 quake in the devastated town of Mianzhu and assisted a medical team. During the Olympics, he volunteered as a security-check coordinator in the National Stadium.

"Volunteering has always been a memorable experience. I will never forget the days in Mianzhu and Beijing," He said.

The Ministry of Civil Affairs also said on Friday that as of December 4, the number of community voluntary organizations reached 430,000 nationally, up 60 percent year-on-year.

(Xinhua News Agency December 7, 2008)