China sends over 200 legal-aid volunteers to less-developed regions

BEIJING -- China launched its annual legal-aid project in Beijing on Friday aimed at providing legal services in the country's central and western regions, with more than 200 volunteers taking part this year, according to the Ministry of Justice.

The volunteer team, comprising 128 lawyers as well as 114 law-school graduates and grass-roots legal-service workers, will head to 128 counties and districts in the central and western regions to help local people solve their legal problems.

The annual public-welfare project allows people living in areas with a shortage of legal-service personnel to receive legal assistance from the volunteers.

Since it was initiated in 2009, the project has dispatched more than 1,800 legal-aid volunteers to over 400 county-level regions, dealing with over 80,000 cases and recovering over 4.5 billion yuan (about 668 million U.S. dollars) of financial losses.