Background
Nothing is known about his education.
Nothing is known about his education.
He was educated locally.
He was a political officer in the Shansi-Chahar- Hopeh and the Hopeh-Jehol Military Regions during the Sino-Japanese War. Toward the end of the conflict he must have been transferred to the Communist guerrilla base in east Hopeh, for he was in An-p’ing, a small town on the Peking-Tientsin Railroad, in August 1945. The Communists had maintained small guerrilla forces and conducted sporadic raids on the Japanese in east Hopeh all during the years of conflict, attempting to neutralize the strategic area covering the approaches to Peking and the railroad and highways leading to Manchuria. The area, known as the East Hopeh District, was located east of Peking, running from the eastern suburbs to the coast. Soon after hostilities ceased, the Communists came into conflict in east Hopeh with American and Nationalist forces intent on taking over north China. One incident involved a conflict at An-p’ing, which the Communists claim they had taken on August 23, 1945, and which they were holding when American and Nationalist troops passed through on their way to Peking in July 1946. The ensuing fight brought forth an investigating team sent in 1946 from the Peking Executive Headquarters, which was attempting to implement the terms of the Cease-Fire Agreement of January 10, 1946. Li was involved in the on-the-spot negotiations held in nearby Hsiang-ho with members of the Peking team. He was then identified as a political commissar of the East Hopeh Military District, responsible to his commander, Nieh Jung-chen, whose troops were in central and eastern Hopeh at the end of the war.
Nothing more was heard of Li until March 1950, by which time he was a deputy secretary of the Kwangsi Party Committee and a member of the Kwangsi Provincial People’s Government. It is not known how long he held the Party post, but he was removed from the Kwangsi government in December 1951. Prior to this, in May 1951, he became chairman of the Kwangsi government’s People’s Supervision Committee, a body having responsibility over government agencies and personnel in their performance of duty. He held the latter post only until December when he left the Kwangsi government.
Although Li was not removed from his posts in Kwangsi until December 1951, he was probably already in Peking by that time, for he was made a vice-minister of the Ministry of Personnel in September, and as a government official he attended the third session of the First CPPCC, held from October 23 to November 1,1951. In May of 1952 he was given an additional office in the Ministry of Personnel, the directorship of the Ministry’s First Office. Li dropped his Personnel Ministry positions when the ministry was abolished with the inauguration of the constitutional government in September 1954.
In December 1954 he became one of the Party representatives on the Second National Committee of the CPPCC, which opened that month. He was reappointed as a Party delegate to the Third National Committee, which convened its initial session in April 1959 and was also named to membership on the Standing Committee, the governing body of the CPPCC. He was named again to both posts when the Fourth CPPCC held its first session in December 1964-January 1965.
Li received his first high-ranking Party post, membership on the Central Control Commission, at the First Plenary Session of the Eighth Central Committee, held the day after the Eighth Party Congress closed on September 27, 1956. In 1960 he became a deputy director of the CCP Organization Department, a post that places him under Organization Department Director An Tzu-wen, who was also Li’s superior in the Personnel Ministry in the early fifties. Li continues to hold both posts in the control and organization organs, positions that make him one of the more important men in Party discipline and security work.