Mao Zedong was a political leader.
Mao Zedong . In contrast , critics consider him a dictator comparable to Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin who damaged traditional Chinese culture , as well as considering him a perpetrator of human rights abuses , and they estimate that Mao was responsible for 40 to 70 million deaths through starvation , prison labour and executions , which would rank his tenure as the top incidence of excess mortality in human history . 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 .