Mao Zedong was a political leader.
The Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China was the head of the Communist Party of China ( CPC ) . Cultural Revolution . Set into motion by Mao Zedong , then Chairman of the Communist Party of China , its stated goal was to preserve ` true ' Communist ideology in the country by purging remnants of capitalist and traditional elements from Chinese society , and to re-impose Maoist thought as the dominant ideology within the Party . Mao Zedong . In 1966 , he initiated the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution , a program to remove `` counter-revolutionary '' elements of Chinese society that lasted 10 years and which was marked by violent class struggle that killed 400,000 to 10,000,000 people , widespread destruction of cultural artifacts and unprecedented elevation of Mao 's personality cult . In modern Chinese politics , the paramount leader ( , , Zuìgāo lǐngdǎo rén ) of the Communist Party of China and the State is an informal term that refers to the most prominent political leader in the People 's Republic of China .