Cai believed strongly in women's education, and spurned the idea of marriage in favor of a vow of celibacy.

She studied anarchism, Marxism, and Leninism alongside other Chinese socialist feminist scholars, including at the Communist University of the Toilers of the East in Moscow.

[2] Cai left her teaching job to work for the Central Women's Department in the Kuomintang in 1925.

Two years later, she joined the Central Women's Committee, leading it in Xiang Jingyu's absence.

Part of her work in the ACWF included creating a strategy to help privileged women take a leading role in scientific and cultural improvements.