Chavez's six-day visit to China starting Tuesday, the fourth since he was elected president in 1999, will be followed by stops in Malaysia and Angola. The tour is part of Chavez's oil-based foreign policy and his determination to seek new clients for Venezuelan crude. Currently the US is Venezuela's main trade partner and by far its largest oil customer. Equally important is Chavez's quest for new international recruits in his anti-US movement. In China, Chavez 'sees an emerging power quietly growing and challenging US dominance,' Caracas Metropolitan University political expert Elsa Cardoso told Agence France-Presse. Chavez announced late Thursday that he will sign agreements covering energy, agriculture and food with Chinese leaders. Venezuela will buy a group of oil supertankers 'so that Venezuela does not depend on renting oil tankers,' Chavez said, adding that China also would help build tankers in Venezuela, without giving any specific dates. As he fashions himself into Washington's staunchest adversary in Latin America along with Cuba's Fidel Castro, Chavez wants China in his corner as he fights for a permanent Security Council seat for Venezuela. Russia came aboard only recently. Direct support from China, however, 'seems difficult because the Chinese don't like to openly defy the United States and know very well how to hedge their bets without taking sides in matters that irritate Washington,' Cardoso added. It is also possible that Chavez dropped his threat to visit Pyongyang because of China's complex relations with North Korea, Cardoso said, 'focusing instead his relations with Iran, another member of the US axis of evil.' It is paradoxical, Cardoso said, that Chavez admires aspects of China 'that the Chinese want to forget, now that they have become an economic powerhouse after opening their doors to the world market and the West.' Chavez speaks in old-fashioned terms about 'taking a big leap forward,' and the cultural revolution, 'focusing on the darkest aspects of China's revolution over the past 50 years,' she said. Cooperation between Venezuela and China has increased over the past years, especially in the energy sector. Chavez is also scheduled to visit a site where Chinese engineers are building Venezuela's first satellite, named after the father of the nation, Simon Bolivar. China's rapprochement to the West 'is not what Chavez is most attracted to,' said Central University of Venezuela professor Franklin Molina. Chavez, Molina said, wants to share international agenda issues with China like UN reform and strengthening multilateral relations to boost its standing as a regional power in Asia and the Pacific. School of International Studies director Mervin Rodriguez said Chavez's '21st Century Socialism' goal is ill defined. 'He seeks alternative routes to put a human face on the economy, although with a simplistic approach. Achieving a socialist change is not a short-term job,' he said. Rodriguez also said it was ironic that while Chavez waves the socialist flag, China 'is coming back from that road with an (economic) model that leaves much room for capitalism; what the Chinese call 'two systems and two economies.' In other words, a mixed economy.' Oil of course is a key factor in Venezuelan foreign policy. Venezuela has offered to export between 500,000 and one mln barrels of oil a day to China if the South American nation reaches its goal of producing 5.8 mln barrels of crude by 2012 and China's demand for oil continues to rise. PIN/AFX