When he returned to China, he started to write essays on how to free the Chinese nation from the Manchu regime and foreign imperialism.

The deeply patriotic book, informed by Republicanism and Social Darwinist racial theories, was widely read and had a profound influence on the revolutionary movement.

He was also influenced by racialist Han ideology, as evidenced in his distaste for the Manchu governing class, as he advocated “genocide [of] the five million and more of the furry and horned Manchu race, cleansing ourselves of 260 years of harsh and unremitting pain, so that the soil of the Chinese subcontinent is made immaculate, and the descendants of the Yellow Emperor will all become Washingtons.” His calls for sovereignty of the Chinese people included the establishment of a parliament, equal rights for women, freedom of speech and freedom of the press.

Zou lived in a foreign concession in Shanghai where he enjoyed extraterritorial rights and could not be sentenced to death by a Qing Court.

Instead, he was closely associated with Zhang Binglin and implicated in the Su Bao incident as a result, which rendered him a prison sentence of two years; he fell ill while incarcerated and died in April 1905 at the age of 20.