"Xinjiang boasts beautiful scenery and the locals are frank and great-hearted. I feel happy to do what I like to do in such a lovable region," adds his wife, Lu.

Yan Fenfen is another won over by employment in western China after coming to Xinjiang three years ago, with her husband Ma Quanhui.

It was a tough choice but has proved worthwhile. They have purchased a car and an apartment with a floor area of 120 square meters. If they had lived in Beijing, they would have had great difficulty achieving such a moderate well-off life.

Yan and Ma took up jobs in Alaer city in the south of Xinjiang in July 2010, when Yan graduated from the Agricultural University of Hebei in North China's Hebei province, and Ma was a company salesman in Beijing.

The young couple's decision to join remote Alaer's population of 240,000 was partly because of intense competition elsewhere in China's job market and the XPCC's offer of an annual salary of no less than 80,000 yuan (about $12,987) per person. More importantly, they could bring into full play what they had learned at university.

Currently, they are in charge of cultivating fruit saplings, and undertaking scientific research within the Tenth Regiment of the XPCC's First Division.

"With dreams, opportunities and diligence, all beautiful life can be created. The Corps is the place where my dream comes true," according to Yan. They have built a 600-square-meter greenhouse for cultivation and made significant progress in promoting soilless cultivation of strawberry.

Recruitment momentum

The XPCC maintains military structural titles such as divisions and regiments, and has its own administration and judicial bodies. It now has nearly 4,000 enterprises and 28 industrial parks and has built six cities or towns, including Shihezi and Alaer.

Han Jun, secretary of the Communist Party of China Branch of the Second Company of the 14th Regiment under the First Division, came to Aksu in southern Xinjiang in 2005, after graduating from Sichuan Agricultural University in Southwest China's Sichuan province.

"I felt sort of repentant about my decision when I arrived here by train to see the desolate area with just one road and several buildings, " Han remembers. He wanted to return to his hometown in Sichuan.