BEIJING, June 29 (Xinhua) -- Officials and experts worldwide have praised China's contributions to the World Trade Organization (WTO) while recognizing the country's newly published white paper.

China has fulfilled its obligations as a member of the WTO, said Sergei Khestanov, associate professor of finance and banking at the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration.

China's inclusion proves the extensive circulation of Chinese products globally, he said. It has injected dynamics into world trade and attempted to reduce barriers.

Khestanov also praised China's efforts to open up its economy, evident by the number of international corporations with representative offices in the country.

Khestanov made the remarks as China's State Council Information Office on Thursday issued a white paper titled "China and the World Trade Organization (WTO)."

It is the first time that China has published a white paper to elaborate on its fulfillment of WTO entry commitments, and describe its vision and actions in advancing higher-level reform and opening-up.

The white paper says, "China firmly observes and upholds the WTO rules, and supports the multilateral trading system that is open, transparent, inclusive and non-discriminatory."

WTO spokesperson Keith Rockwell said the WTO secretariat welcomes the strong support China has shown for the organization.

"China is active in all areas of the organization's activities and it is clear that China's participation was vital to the successful negotiations in both the Trade Facilitation Agreement and the plurilateral initiative expanding the Information Technology Agreement," he told Xinhua.

At a briefing on the white paper Thursday, China's Vice Minister of Commerce Wang Shouwen said by 2010, China had fulfilled all its tariff reduction commitments, reducing the average tariff level from 15.3 percent in 2001 to 9.8 percent.

Subsequently, China voluntarily slashed its import tariff rates on an interim basis many times.

"In 2015, China's trade-weighted average tariff was reduced to 4.4 percent, fairly close to 2.4 percent of the United States and 3 percent of the European Union," said Wang, who also serves as deputy China international trade representative.

China's trading not only contributes to world growth but also benefits less developed nations as "sharing" is its "byword," said Stephen Perry, chairman of 48 Group Club, a British organization composed of company leaders promoting Britain-China trade.

"China is the world's largest trading nation, and contributes more to world growth than any other country by a huge margin. These two facts show the enormous difference China has made to world trade," he told Xinhua. "Beyond that China has helped Asia develop more coherence and helped Asian and African nations to develop their trade."

Thanks to China's membership in the WTO, world trade has become more active and trade volume has increased worldwide, said Alexey Maslov, head of the School of Asian Studies at Russia's National Research University Higher School of Economics.

Chinese products are not only produced domestically, but also processed and repacked in other countries to be sold as foreign products, thus enriching the global market with abundant goods, he said.

(Jin Jing in London, Peter Kenny and Nie Xiaoyang in Geneva, and An Xiaomeng, Luan Hai, Hu Xiaoguang and Shi Hao in Moscow contributed to this article.)