Over the course of his career he held more than thirty directorships in banks, industrial concerns, insurance companies and public utilities, and served in many key governmental positions of financial administration.

Following a traditional education in the Chinese Classics, in 1902 he attended the American Baptist missionary-run Wayland Academy, Hangzhou.

As part of his studies, Li Ming interned at the Yokohama Specie Bank, Ltd., which had been authorized in 1884 by the Ministry of Finance to manage Japan's foreign exchange.

[3] After graduating in 1910, he returned to China and obtained a job as an auditor in the Chekiang Provincial and Industrial Bank, in Hangzhou.

The assets contributed by the member banks enabled the Joint Reserve Board to issue notes and certificates that provided liquidity sufficient to calm the financial panic.

[8] Under direct threat of arrest by the Japanese-backed government under Wang Jingwei at Nanjing, Li Ming left Shanghai in March 1941 and took refuge in the United States until the end of World War II in 1945.

During his stay in the United States he also became a New York member of the Board of Trustees of the Peking Union Medical College and a Trustee of the China Foundation, served as an Adviser to the Chinese Delegation to the United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference at Bretton Woods, and as a Chinese Employers' Delegate to the International Labor Conference at Philadelphia.

After his return to post-war Shanghai in 1946, Li Ming continued to control the Chekiang Industrial Bank as Chairman of the Board of Directors.

He served a short while as Chairman of the Central Bank of China's Import and Export Control Board, but the political situation was rapidly deteriorating and in 1949 he relocated to Hong Kong.

[11] Their children include:[12][13] Bessie (Shih Li Yueqing; 施李月卿; married Szeming Sze), a financial advisor and pianist;[14] Deqing (李德慶), an MIT-educated electrical engineer and power plant administrator in China;[15] Meiqing (高李梅卿; m. George Kao), a social worker and cookbook author;[16] and, Dexian (李德䤼), a banker.