Li Weihan was promoted to become the first principal of the Yan'an-based Central Party School of the Communist Party, the highest training center for party workers and leaders. Li served as principal from 1933 to 1935 and again from 1937 to 1938. After the Proclamation of the People's Republic of China in 1949, Li was involved in managing China's minorities and nationalities as Chairman of the State Ethnic Affairs Commission. He was also a significant player in the Party's drive to introduce state control of the economy, and in the late-1950s Anti-Rightist Campaign, in which his own brother was purged.