China made top eight in the Olympic men's volleyball tournament for the first time in 24 years despite a five-set loss to Italy?on Monday.

The host, who finished fourth in preliminary pool A with two wins against three losses, will play defending champion Brazil in the quarter-finals of the Beijing Games on Wednesday.

Italy, the Athens Games runner-up, held off a strong late surge of the host for the 25-17, 25-23, 21-25, 20-25 and 16-14 victory and improve to a 4-1 record.

In the tiebreaker, China beat off two set points thanks to consecutive smashes of Fang Yingchao to tie it at 14-all, but Luigi Mastrangelo made it 15-14 in favor of Italy with a kill before Fang drove a ball out to surrender the match.

Hristo Zlatanov scored 29 points to lead the Italians, who rested their top scorer Alberto Cisolla in more than three sets.

Going down tamely in the first set, the Chinese fought bravely in the second, erasing an early 12-8 deficit to level it at 17-all.

After the Italians surged away again with a 5-1 run for a comfortable 22-18 cushion, China steadily pulled within 24-23, only to find Matteo Martino tear open the defense put up by Bian Hongmin and Shi Hairong to smash it home for the set winner.

The Chinese fell behind again in the third set, but rallied to run off four points in a row to overtake the lead at 19-17 and held it to 22-20. After Italy cut it to 22-21 through a Emanuele Birarelli spike, Shi Hairong answered with a smash and Guo Peng came from the bench to score two consecutive points to clinch the set for China.

China continued its momentum in the fourth set, racing to a 17-12 lead and never looked back.

Fang Yingchao finished with 20 points for the Chinese men, who are making their first Olympic appearance since the 1984 Los Angeles Games where they finished eighth.

Later on Monday, the unbeaten United States will play Japan in the last match of the preliminaries.

(Xinhua News Agency August 18, 2008)