URUMQI - With China expecting a record 6.99 million students to graduate from college this summer, hopes are high that many of them can be attracted to work in the country's less-developed west.

Recent years have seen a number of government initiatives boosting the region by persuading young professionals of the solid career paths that lie here, as alternatives to settling in crowded coastal cities. One stand-out example can be found in a special administration entity that hit the headlines in Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region this week.

Thursday's mass wedding ceremony for 50 local young couples in the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps' (XPCC) headquarters in Urumqi was designed to showcase the prosperous lives that most of them have forged working for the organization.

The XPCC was established in 1954, when the central government decided to form most military troops in Xinjiang into a production and construction corps, which shoulders the dual task of production and security.

It has benefited from a national program launched in 2003 to recruit college graduates to work for one to three years in 12 western provinces or regions. Among the 3,300 who completed their service periods with the XPCC, 1,100 have chosen to continue their employment.

Happy working couples

It's clearly doing something right in retaining staff in this oft-overlooked area, and Yu Chao and Lu Qianqian have experienced that first hand.

Both from East China's Shandong province, they were among the 50 couples involved in the wedding ceremony on Thursday. After graduating from Yantai University in Shandong in 2010, they came to Xinjiang and have been working at Toutunhe Farm belonging to the 12th Division of the XPCC ever since. Yu is in charge of Communist Youth League affairs while Lu teaches in a kindergarten.

"I love this place where we can bring our talent into play," says Yu.