China's suicide rate is 22.23 people out of every 100,000, the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention said on its website.

"Our nation has one of the highest rates of suicide in the world," the Beijing Youth Daily quoted Beijing Health Bureau spokesman Mao Yu as saying.

About 287,000 people kill themselves in the country of 1.3 billion every year, while about two million try to commit suicide annually.

China marks World Suicide Prevention Day on Saturday, according to the Beijing Youth Daily.

The disease control centre said suicide is the biggest killer among Chinese aged 15 to 34.

Extreme pressure to perform well at school and to find employment were the main reasons behind the high rate of suicide among China's youths, media said.

The suicide rate in rural areas is three times higher than in urban centres and accounts for 75 percent of China's suicide total, it said.

According to the Guangzhou Daily, the number of suicides in China has risen sharply during the reform and open period, when the nation's economy has boomed.

A person attempts to commit suicide in China every two minutes, the paper said.

In 2009, the British medical journal The Lancet identified Lithuania, Finland, Latvia, Hungary, China, Japan and Kazakhstan as all having exceptionally high rates of suicide, 20 per 100,000 people or higher.

China refused to issue a visa to a member of New York-based Human Rights in China (HRIC), who was invited to take part in the talks that ended Wednesday, the EU embassy in China said in a statement.

HRIC had been asked to attend the dialogue as a representative of the Paris-based International Federation of Human Rights, an EU official told AFP.

"The EU made it clear to the Chinese side that it deeply regrets that one participant from a leading European NGO was not allowed to participate," the statement said.

China's foreign ministry spokesman said he was unaware of the visa refusal when questioned by reporters Thursday.

The European Union regularly organises meetings between China and EU groups on the issue of human rights, as well as a high-level dialogue that normally takes place twice a year, alternating between an EU country and China.

HRIC said it was told that the foreign ministry called the group an "anti-China" organisation, whose participation in the seminar was "totally unacceptable".

"We regret being excluded from this exchange," it said in a statement, "but our more fundamental concern is the success of the Chinese authorities in stigmatising any independent voices as 'anti-China'."

HRIC did not name the expert who was barred.

The seminar comes as dozens of writers, lawyers, government critics and activists have been jailed, placed under house arrest or harassed by police since calls for Arab-style protests began appearing online early this year.

Meanwhile, the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo remains in jail in China for his calls for greater democracy and human rights in the country.