Why did Che Guevara look to Mao Zedong and China for support?

Che Guevara’s shift toward the People’s Republic of China and its leader Mao Zedong was primarily driven by his growing disillusionment with the Soviet Union.1

Guevara felt betrayed by the Soviets during the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, when they removed their missiles from Cuba without consulting the island's leadership. As he became increasingly disheartened by Cuba’s status as a Soviet client state, he turned to China as an alternative source of support and as a model for revolutionary action.1

His interest in Mao was also rooted in their shared focus on guerrilla warfare. Mao had developed a codified theory of protracted revolutionary war, and his work, On Guerrilla Warfare (1937), was widely regarded as an extensive and radical theory of conflict. This aligned with Guevara’s own foco theory, which emphasized the role of rural guerrilla forces in underdeveloped nations.21