Li qualified for the &lt;a href="2011%E2%80%9312%20snooker%20season"&gt;2011/2012&lt;/a&gt; professional Main Tour as one of four semi-finalists from the second Q School event. As a new player on the tour Li would need to win four matches in order to reach the main stage of the ranking tournaments. He accomplished this in qualifying for the second biggest tournament on the snooker calendar, the UK Championship, with wins over Stuart Carrington, Andy Hicks, Jack Lisowski and Fergal O'Brien. He faced former world champion Shaun Murphy in the first round of the event and was beaten 3–6. He could not qualify for another tournament for the remainder of the season but did play in all 12 of the PTC events throughout the season reaching, but not progressing past, the last 16 on three occasions.