BEIJING - China plans to send about 17,000 volunteers, mostly university graduates, to serve the country's western underdeveloped areas this year, the Communist Youth League (CYL) announced on Wednesday.

The volunteers, who will be selected from applicants at universities nationwide, will spend one to three years working in West China's educational, medical, agriculture and legal assistance sectors, according to the CYL Central Committee.

About 10,000 of the volunteers will serve in regions inhabited mainly by ethnic minority groups, the CYL said.

The annual voluntary service campaign is sponsored by the CYL Central Committee and the ministries of human resources and social security, education and finance.

More than 140,000 university volunteers have served in underdeveloped regions since the campaign was introduced in 2003. More than 16,000 of them have ended up settling down in the regions they volunteered in.