Zhou was born Zhou Shaoyi () in
Yiyang,
Hunan on 9 August 1908. He began to use the pseudonym Libo, of which sound is the resemblance of English word "liberty", in the 1930. Zhou taught himself English, then he translated some English versions of Soviet novels. He was imprisoned for supporting a workers' strike in 1932, on his release he joined the
League of the Left-Wing Writers in 1934 and the
Chinese Communist Party in 1935. He served as a war reporter during 1937–38, and interpreter to Agnes Smedley meantime. Then he went to Yan'an and worked at
Lu Xun Art Institute () in 1939. Zhou's 1948 novel
Hurricane became a celebrated novel of
class struggle. Zhou received the third class
Stalin Prize in 1951 for the novel. Zhou's 1955 novel
Rivulets of Steel depicts the rejuvenation of a derelict steel factory after the
People's Liberation Army defeats the Japanese occupiers. The transformation of the factory is narrated through a worker who undergoes his own political transformation through the novel's progression. The novel uses the
socialist realist approach. Academic Benjamin Kindler describes
Rivulets of Steel as "an attempt to devise narrative strategies adequate to the conditions of the
First Five Year Plan, being therefore distinct from the agrarian novels of the
Yan'an period." He had been targeted during the
Cultural Revolution. Zhou was elected as the deputy of the
1st,
2nd, and
3rd National People's Congresses. ==Works==