As coach he trained several world champions and won the national honorary sports medal four times.

Zhou was born in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province on 23 January 1939, with ancestry in Shangrao, Jiangxi.

He won a bronze medal in the men's doubles at the 1961 World Table Tennis Championships in Beijing, with partner Wang Jiasheng.

[1] Zhou became a coach of the Chinese national team in 1973, and trained several male and female world champions, including Cao Yanhua, Guo Yuehua, Chen Xinhua, Zhang Deying, and Qi Baoxiang.

[1] In Cao Yanhua's memoirs, she called Zhou almost a "devil", and recalled that though she fainted several times during training, he made her continue practicing after she regained consciousness.