By Carlos Camacho
Latin American Herald Tribune

CARACAS -- Venezuela is seeking to strengthen even further its ties with China, the President of Venezuela’s National Assembly (AN) said Wednesday while in a state visit to Beijing.

AN President Fernando Soto Rojas, a former communist guerrilla in the 1960’s and long-time ally of President Hugo Chavez, told state television network Venezolana de Television that “we (Venezuela) have a lot to learn from China” and that his state visit there aims at “strengthening the historic ties that have already been developing since President Chavez took over the direction of the country. We have already 400 agreements of diverse nature, and with these talks we have agreed to strengthen the political and ideological relationship.”

Before Hugo Chavez took over in 1999, relations between Venezuela and China were mostly limited to state oil company China National Petroleum Corporation operating in a small oil field in Eastern Venezuela. Nowadays, Venezuela owes $34 billion (a third of its total debt, foreign and domestic) to China and is paying most of that with crude shipments of 400,000 barrels per day. China has become the second largest client for Venezuelan oil after the United States and CNPC now has several more oil and gas projects, while other Chinese state oil companies such as Sinopec have entered the country as well.

Soto Rojas will be in China, meeting with Communist Party and People’s National Assembly leaders, for a week at the invitation of China's top legislator Wu Bangguo, and then he will visit Vietnam, the government said.