BEIJING, Jan. 3 (Xinhua) -- The People's Daily, the official newspaper of the Communist Party of China (CPC), said Thursday it has gained record high popularity among readers with its circulation hitting 2.3 million copies a day on Jan. 1 2008.

    The 9.8 percent increase from same period of last year further consolidated its status as one of the world's most read newspapers. Its subscription rose by more than 500,000 copies over the past five years.

    The daily attributed its increased popularity to the facts that "every decision and policy made by the CPC Central Committee has earned sincere support from the whole Party and from people of the whole nation; the prestige and image of the CPC has constantly improved; all the causes of CPC are developing well and rapidly, while the People's Daily, as the official newspaper of CPC, always accurately, timely and effectively popularize the Party's guidelines and policies."

    After the successful convention of the 17th CPC National Congress in October, "the whole Party and people of all ethnic groups were vigorous to learn the spirit of the congress, further driving up the newspaper's circulation," the Daily said.

    The technology of color printing, which was originally used by only a few of the newspaper's printing factories, has been introduced to all the newspaper's printing factories since the beginning of year 2007.

    In terms of circulation, People's Daily ranked the world's No. 8, according to the 2007 World Daily Newspapers Circulation Top 100 List released by the 60th World Newspaper Congress & 14th World Editors Forum Info Services Expo in Cape Town of South Africa on 3-6 June 2007.

    China's another major official newspaper, the Reference News, sponsored by this Xinhua News Agency, ranked the No. 5 in the list with a daily circulation of nearly 3.2 million copies.