Before he joined the Communists, Lü worked as an assistant to the Kuomintang general, Zhang Xueliang.

It was in this role that he was a witness to the Xi'an Incident, whereby Zhang and his fellow general, Yang Hucheng, forced the then-Chinese leader, Chiang Kai-shek to suspend the civil war with the Communists in 1936 in order and join forces against the Japanese.

He then commanded a military force that fought the Japanese army in northern China.

Following the Communist victory of 1949, Lü served as a senior military leader of the PRC.

[1]: 86  This body was created in 1964 to supervise railroad development during the Third Front construction of basic industry and national defense industry in China's rugged interior in preparation for potential invasion by the United States or the Soviet Union.