Born in Hong'an, Hubei, Li came from a poor family and spent his teenage years working at a carpenter's shop.

After the demise of the Gang, Li was appointed Vice Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party and a member of the Central Military Commission.

For the rest of his career, Li complained that his own achievements during the brief Hua interregnum were not sufficiently recognized as the basis of the progress experienced in China during the 1980s.

Li was described as an "orthodox" or "Soviet-style" communist and was a firm believer in central planning and sociopolitical conformity, so disliked Deng Xiaoping's more radical economic reform ideas.

He had in fact been largely responsible for drafting the short-lived Ten Year Plan of 1978 which attempted to build a Soviet-style economy based around heavy industry and energy production.

However, Deng quickly terminated these ideas and instituted his own "go slow" approach that involved gradually allowing the development of light industry and consumer goods.

One of these was Premier Zhao Ziyang, whom Li strongly opposed for being too willing to import Western ideas and move away from a planned economy.

As the decade progressed, Deng Xiaoping, always an opponent of lifetime tenure in office, gradually convinced most of the party elders to retire.

He was a strong supporter of Jiang Zemin's rise to power,[citation needed] and during the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, Li was one of the hardline Party elders who pushed for a strong response to the demonstrations and supported Premier Li Peng's desire to use military force to suppress the protests.

His youngest daughter, Li Xiaolin, is the President of the Chinese People's Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries.