[1][2] His death in 2003, which had been preceded by a series of widely circulated professions of his liberal commitment, prompted an outpouring of adulatory writings, securing his posthumous status as a champion of intellectual freedom under difficult circumstances.
Formally joining the Party in 1948, he became international editor-in-chief and Deputy Director of the Xinhua News Agency and later served as Premier Zhou Enlai's diplomatic secretary.
He was transferred to the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) in 1980 to set up the United States Research Institute, of which he was appointed Director in 1982.
According to contemporary critics like Cao Changqing (a US-based journalist) and Zhong Weiguang (a scholar and writer based in Germany), he compares poorly with Eastern bloc liberals like Milovan Đilas (Djilas), or, in China, resolute non-collaborators like Chen Yinke and original, if tragically persecuted thinkers like Gu Zhun.
Xu Youyu responded to this view that conditions for Chinese intellectuals had been considerably harsher than for East Europeans like Djilas; to be fair, Li should be placed in comparison with other committed but "enlightened" communists like Zhou Yang and Yu Guangyuan.