ABSTRACT
An official, albeit implicit, Chinese critique of Che Guevara’s methods in Bolivia in 1966-1967 can be found in Peking’s praise in 1969 for a Bolivian Communist Draft Peasant-Agrarian Program. Peking stresses Bolivia’s feudal character and its domination by American imperialism. That is, the revolution should ally with bourgeois nationalism. Revolutionary power in China grew after the Japanese invasion ended China’s hyper-eolonial status. As the Chinese endlessly state, revolution cannot be exported. If a popular liberation struggle must take a national form, then only Bolivians can lead and make Bolivia’s revolutionary war. Mao found China’s revolutionary potentialities great and special while ‘small countries like Belgium which lacked this condition have few or no such possibilities’. Mao changes his views as the world changes. He is a revolutionary empiricist. He offers no ready-made revolutionary prescription for all times and places. However, Mao’s realism is tempered by his patriotism.
