At the 18th Party Congress held in the fall of 2012, Li was elevated to the number two spot on the Politburo Standing Committee (PSC) and thereby became one of the top leaders of China. As he was expected to become Premier, this was a shift from previous convention on the PSC set in 1997 whereby the Premier ranked third, after the Chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, who ranked second. This change showed that the party intended to project Li as the number two figure in the Chinese political hierarchy, behind only party General Secretary Xi Jinping. Also in that same year, he had personally met with the openly gay Ma Baoli (a policeman turned businessman) to discuss the threat posed by HIV. In the same conversation, they discussed LGBT issues on preventing discrimination which has been interpreted as a sign that the People's Republic is slowly coming around to the idea as major Chinese businesses have already begun tapping into the purchasing power of the LGBT community.