China suffered their eighth defeat at the 2003 men's volleyball World Cup as they dropped to Venezuela 23-25, 25-22, 28-26 and 25-20 here on Friday.

The young Chinese men, who had an average age of less than 23, have only managed one win at the round-robin tournament.

It was a close match as neither team could play effective defense. After the two sides fought to a 23-23 tie, Carlos Luna drove a ball out to give China the first set point and a receiving offside from Venezuela costed them the opener.

Venezuela raced to a 14-11 lead in the second set. The Chinese pulled it back at 14-all, but the South Americans surged ahead again with a 4-0 run and never looked back .

China led most of the way for a 24-23 advantage in the third set, but Venezuela withstood three points to go up 27-26 and an net violation from the Chinese side gave the set to Venezuela.

Venezuela opened the fourth set with an 8-3 lead and held on for the victory.

"Our players did not have fighting spirit today," said Chinese head coach Di An'he. "And we failed to play steadily through the match."

"Our attacking and blocking were too bad, the spikers were not in form," Di added.

Tang Miao led the Chinese with 17 points, but he only managed an attacking percentage of 43.59. Shen Qiong, one of China's ace spikers, failed to convert any of his eight attacking opportunities.

Ernardo Gomez scored a game-high 22 points to lead Venezuela to their third win in nine ties.

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