CHINA printed 98.7 million newspapers a day last year, leading the five major newspaper markets around the world, the World Association of Newspapers said in its annual report on Monday.

India was the second-largest market last year with daily newspaper production of 88.9 million, followed by Japan with 69.1 million, the US with 52.3 million and Germany with 21.1 million, the report said.

Income based on advertisements in Chinese newspapers rose 16 percent last year and has increased by 58 percent over the past five years, the report said.

Chinese, Finns and Brazilians read newspapers for 48 minutes a day, six minutes fewer than Belgians, who top the list for the longest daily reading time.

Unlike North America, newspaper sales in Asia, Europe and Africa all increased.

Advertising income grew 3.77 percent worldwide, according to the annual report. A total of 556 million newspaper copies were issued every day last year, an increase of 4.61 percent. The growth was 2.3 percent, excluding free newspapers.

Every day 515 million people bought newspapers and the volume of newspaper readers might be more than 1.4 billion. Among the 100 biggest circulation newspapers, 60 were in China, Japan and India.

Despite a decline in newspaper sales in Japan, 1,000 people in the country bought 630.9 newspaper copies on average, the most in the world.

Newspapers and new media, such as news portal Websites and mobile phone news, may form an alliance to seek mutual benefits, said William Dean Singleton, CEO of US-based MediaNews Group.

Mike Smith, director of US-based Northwestern University's Media Management Center, said the alliance between news portal Yahoo Inc and 12 media groups, which owned 264 newspapers in the US, seemed to have been good to both sides. Newspapers found new readers through new technologies, while Yahoo became more reliable through picking up news from main stream newspapers, he added.