2011–15: Under-14 World Champion Zhou earned her first
FIDE rating after the 2010 World Youth Championship, starting at 1710 in January 2011 at the age of ten. Once in Canada, she had more opportunity to compete in tournaments with adults. With good performances at both the 2011 Montreal Open and the 2011 World Youth Championship that each resulted in her gaining 50 rating points, she finished the year at a rating of 1782. Zhou had a large rating jump of nearly 200 points in 2014. Towards the end of 2014, Zhou produced her best result of the year by winning the gold medal in the girls' under-14 division at the World Youth Championships in
Durban, South Africa. She scored 8½/11 to finish in equal first with
Oliwia Kiołbasa, the only other undefeated player in the division. They were also tied on the first tiebreak criterion, having drawn against each other in the tenth round. As such, Zhou clinched the gold medal on the second tiebreak criterion, which was a
Buchholz score. Her highest rating during the year was 2157. After losing 99 points at the Reykjavik Open, she regained 75 points at two events in Canada in May. In late May, Zhou won the girls' under-18 division at the
North American Youth Chess Championships in
Toluca, Mexico to earn the
Woman International Master (WIM) title. After another large rating drop at the under-20 North American Female Championships, Zhou returned to Kecskemét for two more tournaments in August. She gained 300 points between both tournaments, including 174 at the latter. As a result, she rose to a rating of 2328, crossing both 2200 and 2300 for the first time. She was the first Canadian woman to earn either of those titles. At the Stockholm Chess Challenge in March, she won her last-round game against
Toms Kantāns, who was then an International Master (IM) rated 2496 and is the highest-rated player she has defeated. Later in the year, Zhou earned all three
norms for the WGM title in three successive tournaments beginning in July. The first and third events were both in Kecskemét where she had also done well the previous year. She scored 7½/10 in the Chess in Kecskemét July IM tournament and then 7/10 in the Chess in Kecskemét July GM tournament. In-between, she travelled to
Novi Sad in Serbia and had her best performance among these three events, scoring 7/9 at the IM Riblje Ostrvo 3 tournament, a ½ point more than what was needed for the norm. Zhou's last big result of the year was winning the
Canadian Women's Championship by a point, a victory that qualified her to compete at the
Women's World Chess Championship the following year. From 2017 onwards, Zhou began competing at fewer chess tournaments in part to focus on her studies at university. She entered the 2017 Women's World Chess Championship knockout event as the 54th seed among 64 competitors. She faced 11th seed
Natalia Pogonina in the first round, and was eliminated in the two-game match 1½ to ½ after drawing the first game with black but losing the second game with white. At the end of the year, Zhou was unable to defend her Canadian women's national championship, losing by a ½ point to
Maili-Jade Ouellet. After more than a year hiatus from competitive chess during the
COVID-19 pandemic, Zhou returned to chess in May 2021 for the online Canadian World Cup qualifier tournament and won with a score of 7½/8 in a double round-robin format. As the 82nd seed out of 103 players at the
World Cup, she was eliminated in the first round by 47th seed
Vaishali Rameshbabu, losing both games of their match.
Teaching Beyond playing chess, Zhou has written chess articles for
ChessBase. Some of her articles feature her own statistical analysis of games. She has also released two instructional DVDs through ChessBase, one on tactics and the other on openings. ==Team competitions==