Urumqi Municipal Overseas Chinese Union has launched an initiative in cooperation with six government departments to protect the basic rights of the poor and disabled residents of the city.
According to media reports, the initiative will benefit 50 poor Urumqi families who have been selected based on a thorough survey of over 200 underprivileged returned overseas Chinese households. Most of these families have members with serious illnesses.
Li Peifang, chairman of UMOCU, said that the so-called "Love Initiative" is aimed at helping the local returned overseas Chinese families get rid of poverty and assist more of them in improving their quality of life.
Xinjiang is one of the major regions in western China that have the most returned overseas Chinese. There are more than one million returned overseas Chinese in the region in total, and about 200,000 of them are living in Urumqi. Different from the returned overseas Chinese in the east and southeastern parts of China, Xinjiang's overseas Chinese have mainly lived in developing countries in western Asia.
