Mao Zedong was a Chinese communist revolutionary and founding father of the People's Republic of China. As the leader of the Chinese Communist Party, he established the People's Republic of China in 1949 and initiated programs like the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution that had both positive and negative impacts on China's economic development and society. Some of his policies led to famine and millions of deaths, while others were aimed at modernizing China and establishing communism.