(I actually said he did do a lot of good for China)

No you didn't, you left the matter ambiguous

and would not consider some US lib YouTuber a centrist for thinking that

Contra is a centrist because she supports Joe fucking Biden, and I never insinuated it was the Mao thing, though I think the chauvinism is a related issue.

But your criteria for "strongman" appears entirely based on the politician's personal affects

Yeah, that's because strongman is in large part a rhetorical affectation, just like "populist" is. Speaking to that side, a strongman is someone who builds their image on machismo, occasionally in a very literal sense, and frames their political actions/policy as embodying that machismo. It does not mean the same thing as "dictator," which we have a dozen different words for, though the two terms are associated with each other. Mussolini was a strongman, I would argue Hitler was not (megalomaniac though he was). Putin is (and especially was) another good example of a strongman, just for reference.

If Contra called one of history's most radical democrats a dictator (and I think she also said that, but I wouldn't rewatch that stupid fucking video short of getting paid to do so), I would merely say she was an ignorant chauvinist. Calling him a "strongman" is beyond that.

which for Mao was literally asking every household have a picture of him in it to thank

[citation needed] Towards the end, those pictures certainly were there, and there were backwards officials who surely made it policy on a municipal level in some cases, but Mao didn't even want his face on the currency like it now unfortunately is. To act like he was out there going "Please clap" and telling people to use the Little Red Book like some kind of Daoist charm is, I believe, severely misunderstanding the social circumstances of the PRC's establishment.

and rooting out and jailing dissidents

I wish he was better at it, since we wound up with a liberal-infested hive anyway. I care much less about civil rights for fascists and capitalist roaders than I do that the children are fed.