After the surrender of Japan and the start of the Chinese Civil War, Luo worked in the Central Social Affairs Department (SAD) under Kang Sheng.
During the early years of the People's Republic, Luo worked closely with Premier Zhou Enlai and with Wang Dongxing, Mao Zedong's head of security, and these two friendships would help him survive the turmoil of the Cultural Revolution relatively unscathed.
[2] Official Chinese Communist records credit Luo with personally preventing an assassination attempt against Liu Shaoqi by Chiang Kai-Shek's Taiwanese during an official visit to Cambodia in April 1963, as well as with engineering the defection, in July 1965, of high-ranking Nationalist general Li Zongren to Beijing, which caused a sensation among overseas Chinese and was a major propaganda victory for the Communist regime.
[2] Other important intelligence activities during the 1950s and 1960s included the funding, arming and training of dozens of Asian, African and Latin American militant groups and liberation movements.
[2] As China and the Soviet Union became increasingly hostile and Mao Zedong played "the American card" by coming to an understanding with Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, Luo found himself presiding over the daily work of the CID, which officially had remained without a Director since 1967 (in 1969 it was even placed under the Intelligence Bureau of the PLA General Staff, although in practice the merger was not complete).