In 1925, he opposed family arranged marriages, ran away from home, and was admitted to the preparatory class of Peking University (中国大学) in Beijing, where he participated in the revolution under the influence of Li Dazhao.
In the summer of 1928, the Second Northern Expedition was victorious, the Feng faction warlords were defeated and retreated from the pass, and Chen Gang was rescued and released from prison.
On the eve of the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War, he was sent back to China to work secretly in Shanghai, but the deterioration of the situation prevented him from carrying out that assignment.
[citation needed] At the end of 1937, he arrived in Yan'an via Xinjiang and was assigned to work in the security, intelligence and counterintelligence departments.
At this time, at his own request, he was transferred to his native province of Sichuan where, during the next decade and a half, he would hold a number of senior party positions in the industrial and labour sectors in, in addition to being a concurrent member of the CCP Central Supervisory Commission.