Literal translation used to be the most common strategy in Chinese political translation as it was believed to be able to assure faithfulness in both form and content. However, as time goes by, literal translation, word-for-word translation in particular, is already unable to satisfy target readers’ needs in the political context. Therefore, this study, with a focus on the translation of “tong zhi”, takes a critical approach to investigating the changes of strategies adopted in political translation and to explore possible factors invoking the changes. Two parallel corpora are built for the investigation, with the Chinese and English versions of Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung and Governance of China: Volume I by President Xi Jinping. It is found that the proportion of “tong zhi” translated literally as “comrade” in Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung is much higher than that in Governance of China: Volume I. Besides, in Xi’s book, the translations of “tong zhi” are more diverse and less ideological than those in Mao’s book. It is argued that factors causing these changes may include the disparities in the semantic meanings of “tong zhi”, the leader’s image construction, consideration of the target readership and changing purpose of publicity translation.