Li has also served as the editor for the Journal of Comparative Economics (2000–2003) and the Economics Bulletin, as well as being named an honorary professor at Sichuan University and Nankai University. He returned to China in 2004 to teach at his alma mater, Tsinghua, and to serve as head of the Center for China in the World Economy research center.

He has also held the following positions: visiting scholar at the Center for International Development (CID) of the Harvard Kennedy School (1986), assistant professor at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, research fellow at Hoover Institute of the Stanford University, and professor and deputy director of the Economic Development Research Center of Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.

His childhood was spent in Sichuan province, as a result of his parents being displaced to the countryside during the Cultural Revolution. He currently lives in Beijing with his wife and two children. He is a member of the 1985 inaugural class of Tsinghua’s SEM, and studied abroad immediately following his graduation. A student of economic-transition scholars Eric Maskin, Andrei Shleifer, and János Kornai, Li received his Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard University in 1992. His current research interests are China’s macroeconomy, economic development models, international comparisons of economic growth, and China’s need to pursue a development pattern fitting with its large economic status.