He was later relocated to work in the Tzeyuan town in Guangxi, where he married his first wife, Minzi (Chinese: 敏子).

In 1978 he left Guangxi and attended the Institute of Philosophy of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, where he received a masters degree and a PhD.

[2] Zhou caused controversy in 2015 by a Weibo post which said that women were beautiful when cleaning the house or feeding babies, which led to him being accused of having straight man cancer.

[3] In the Starry Sky of Thoughts, Zhou states that from his viewpoint, the beauty of a woman will inevitably be compromised if she fails to become a good lover, wife, and mother.

[8] Lu Ping (Chinese: 吕频), a feminist activist, argued that Zhou’s words were "not only ignorant about women, but also contained an arrogant attitude from his ivory tower.”[9]