As a doubles player, Li has enjoyed great success, winning 26 ITF titles and a further nine WTA Tour titles. She competed at the
2004 Summer Olympics, defeating
Spain to win a gold medal in the women's tennis doubles along with her partner
Sun Tiantian. As a singles player, Li enjoyed limited success in ITF events until June 2000, when she qualified for a WTA tournament at Tashkent, then defeated
Alina Jidkova of Russia in the first round of the main draw, before bowing out in Round Two. As a wildcard entrant to the WTA event at Shanghai that September, she lost in three sets to
Tara Snyder in the first round. Without further success for the rest of the year, she ended world-ranked 325, beating her previous personal best of 347 at the end of 1998. A year of indifferent results at lowly ITF level followed in 2001, but in September she came through qualifying with three straight wins to reach Shanghai again, beating countrywoman
Liu Nannan in the final round, only to lose to Frenchwoman
Nathalie Dechy in the main draw. But this achievement was not enough to prevent her world ranking from dropping to 536 by the year's end. 2002 was a poorer year still for Li Ting in singles, as she failed to qualify for Shanghai and won only one match in just four ITF tournaments entered, leading her year-end ranking to slump to 837. In 2003, she attempted to buck this trend by entering qualifying for several WTA Tour events while shunning the ITF circuit altogether, and managed to win her first round qualifying ties at Hyderabad, Bali and Shanghai, but failed to progress further until the Japan Open in late September, for which she qualified with wins over
Ivana Abramović and
Yan Zi, before being easily beaten by
Shinobu Asagoe of Japan in the main draw first round. Frustrated with her lack of progress at WTA level, she retreated into ITF territory, and met with some success at the $50,000 Paducah tournament in October, where she gained main draw entry as a
lucky loser in qualifying, then reached the quarter-final before losing to
Zheng Jie in three sets. Following this result, she was awarded wild-cards into two further $50,000 tournaments, but won just one match at the second. Still, she had pulled her world ranking back up inside the top 500, to No. 436. In 2004, as if from nowhere, Li Ting's WTA career took off. She qualified for Doha with wins over
Shikha Uberoi and future stars
Mara Santangelo and
Maret Ani, then defeated
Els Callens in the main draw first round before losing in straight sets to
Jennifer Capriati despite forcing a tie-break in the first set. In May, she proved this superb performance was no accident by qualifying for her second successive WTA tournament, this time defeating
Martina Müller,
Mervana Jugić-Salkić and
Michaela Paštiková, all very capable top-150 players, in straight sets, then stunned
Iveta Benešová 6–4, 6–1 in the main draw first round before being downed in three sets by
Jelena Kostanić in Round 2. She competed little over the summer, but entered qualifying for Beijing in September, beating
Martina Suchá in the first round before losing to her on-form countrywoman
Li Na. At
Guangzhou, she was awarded a wildcard to the main draw, and proved she deserved it by advancing to the semi-final with easy straight-sets victories over
Anikó Kapros,
Nicole Pratt and
Peng Shuai, only to lose again to her former long-time doubles partner (and the eventual tournament champion) Li Na. In October, she entered the first $50k Shenzhen tournament, and reached the quarter-finals after a first-round win over
Yan Zi, before losing two matches later to
Sun Tiantian. Li Ting ended the year in the top 400 for the first time since 2000, and in the top 300 for the first time in her career, world-ranked 168, after a vastly improved season. January 2005 saw Li Ting qualify for her first
Grand Slam tournament at the
Australian Open, with notable wins over
Laura Pous Tió and
Sandra Kloesel; and she took a set from
Marta Domachowska of Poland in the main draw first round but lost the match. In February, she won another three back-to-back matches to qualify for Hyderabad, but then lost to upcoming starlet
Jarmila Gajdošová in the first round of the tournament proper. At Doha, she reached the final round of qualifying with wins over Zheng Jie and
Anca Barna, then lost to Roberta Vinci. At Dubai, she took
Maria Kirilenko to three sets, two of them tie-breaks, in an unfortunate first-round qualifying draw which she ultimately lost. But by the end of February she had improved her world-ranking to a career-best 136. Li Ting's results at WTA events then took a downward turn for the next six months. Although she battled through to win a $50k event at Beijing in June, defeating Yan Zi surprisingly comfortably in the final, this career-best tournament victory was a blip on the radar of her disappointing summer results at WTA tournaments. In September, however, she came close to qualifying for Beijing, beating
Martina Müller before losing to
Emma Laine in three sets. Then at Guangzhou, she reached the quarterfinal with excellent wins over
Vera Zvonareva and
Alina Jidkova, then very nearly reached the semifinal for the second successive year, as she pushed eventual finalist
Nuria Llagostera Vives all the way before finally losing their joust 6–3, 4–6, 6–7. But after this, she did not play again for the rest of the year, and ended it ranked 177th, down almost forty places on her peak. The 2006 season began promisingly for Li Ting, as she qualified for the Australian Open for the second consecutive year, but lost in the first round to Elena Vesnina. In February, she performed well in qualifying for the tournament in Doha, Qatar, recording wins over Yan Zi and Tatiana Poutchek. However, she was defeated in the first round of the main draw by Maria Kirilenko in straight sets. By the end of the month, her ranking had fallen to 209. Despite this, she demonstrated the ability to compete against higher-ranked players. In 2007, Li stopped partnering with Sun Tiantian, to make room for a new Chinese doubles player.
Sun Shengnan was paired with Sun Tiantian, according to the
2007 Australian Open website. ==Olympic finals==