When he returned to China in 1911, he passed the Shanghai bar and worked briefly for newspapers associated with Sun Yat-sen used his Japanese language ability as a translator for the Da Gonghe Bao.

In Paris he covered the Peace Conference of 1919 and threw a reception for fellow journalists that included more than 130 guests from fifteen countries, a larger affair than even the Chinese embassy could host.

Hu had taken subsidies from Wu, the Anfu Clique and the Nationalists but now wanted the paper to emulate the standards of the Times of London or Japan's Mainichi Shimbun.

[6] Ta Kung Pao maintained a non-party stance but supported Chiang Kai-shek and the Northern Expedition that brought his Nationalist Party to power.

The paper used its relatively safe location in Tianjin to write anti-imperialist and anti-warlord editorials as well as to criticize the new government in Nanjing and become an influential voice of liberal opinion.

[7] Circulation grew under Hu's management and the editorship of Zhang Jiluan, but the paper was forced to move to Shanghai in 1936 to avoid Japanese control in Tianjin, then to Hankow in 1937, and Chongqing in 1939.

[8]He was appointed to the Chinese People's Political Consulative Conference in 1942 and was a member of a delegation to London in 1943, returning to China after a visit to the United States in 1944.

The paper published an editorial, "The Liberals' Belief," (Ziyou zhuyizhe de xinnian) opposing continuation of the Civil War and advocating the Third Way.

[10]In 1935 he looked back and told his readers that journalism was one of the tools of modern culture, and in China had developed in pretty much the same stages as abroad: from being supported by political patrons to being supported by the market; from literary essays by individual brilliant writers to plentiful and varied features written by stables of writers; from small-scale shops operated by a handful of overworked do-it-alls to a newsrooms made up of specialists; and a readership that had evolved from a small educated social élite toward a mass base.