Baoding Military Academy
At age 17 Li joined the Tongmenghui (Revolutionary Alliance), the Society chiefly instrumental in the overthrow of the Manchu Dynasty and establishment of a Republican government in China in 1911. He became a career military officer on graduating from the Baoding Military Academy in the Academy’s sixth graduating class in 1919. He was a division commander in the famed that helped eliminate the power of warlords and unify the nation in the late 1920s.