[1][6] In 1954, he began a two-year study at the college of Marxism-Leninism in Beijing, which later became the Central Party School of the CCP.
[1][6] Since 1956, Li worked at the Political Research Office of the CCP Central Committee (中共中央政治研究室), until the beginning of Chinese Cultural Revolution (1966–1976) during which he was purged and persecuted.
[1][2][6] Li and his family were sent to the countryside at the shore of Bohai (near Tianjin) to do farm work and manual labor.
[1][2][6] After the Cultural Revolution ended, Li was rehabilitated and held several key positions in Beijing since 1977, including the director of the Communist Party History Department of the National History Museum, deputy director of the Theory Bureau of the CCP Publicity Department, and President of the Fujian Academy of Social Sciences.
[1][2] He was also a visiting scholar and Henry Luce Fellow at Princeton University in the United States in 1986.