Chinese physician who was the personal physician & confidant of Chairman Mao Zedong. Li received his medical degree from the West Union University Medical School in Sichuan province in 1945 & five years later was named director of the private medical facility that treated China’s top leaders. Beginning in 1954, when Mao chose Li as his personal physician, the two men began to develop a close relationship that lasted until Mao’s death in 1976. During those years, Li compiled a series of diaries. Following Mao’s death, Li held several medical posts before joining his two sons in the USA in 1988. Li’s biography of Mao honored the memory of his late wife, who had urged her husband to share his knowledge with the rest of the world. Relying partly on memory (some 40 diaries were deliberately destroyed during the perilous Cultural Revolution), Li set forth a detailed account of the man he had served for 22 years. The book, which was banned in China as slanderous but became a best-seller in English & several other languages, also provided important details, previously unknown, about many of Mao’s colleagues & of pivotal events that occurred during Mao’s rule