Mao Zedong was a political leader.
In political and social sciences , communism ( from Latin communis , `` common , universal '' ) is the philosophical , social , political , and economic ideology and movement whose ultimate goal is the establishment of the communist society , which is The Communist Party of China ( CPC ) is the founding and ruling political party of the People 's Republic of China ( PRC ) . A dictator is a political leader who wields absolute power . 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 .