As the governor of Shandong Province, he exerted significant influence, helping leak information about the Twenty-One Demands to the media.

A supporter of Yuan Shikai, the provisional president, and his actions to revert China from a republic to a monarch-led empire, Zhou, during his tenure as governor of Shandong, believed that the Chinese people, with a literacy rate of 2%, were not ready to govern themselves.

(To further buttress his argument, Zhou may have invited Columbia University political scientist Frank Johnson Goodnow to justify monarchism for China.)

Seeking revenge, he convinced Zhang Zuolin to replace the premier with Liang Shiyi, the head of the civilian Communications Clique.

Having succeeded, but complaining of Zhili interference, he left to study film-making in the United States, later returning to China to start a film studio.