Zou Taofen (; November 5, 1895 – July 24, 1944) was a Chinese journalist, media entrepreneur, and political activist. Zou was known for developing Shenghuo Zhoukan (Life Magazine) into a pioneering journal of political reporting and social commentary, and for his participation in the National Salvation Movement that mobilized opposition to the Nationalist Government and demanded stronger resistance to Japan's expansion. He was one of the so-called "Seven Gentlemen" who were arrested in 1936 and then freed in July 1937 on the eve of the Second Sino-Japanese War. During the war Zou worked in Communist held areas. He died in Shanghai, July 1944, and was granted posthumous Chinese Communist Party membership in September of that year.
Early life and career
Zou was born in Fuzhou, Fujian province in 1895 as the eldest of six children. His father was a minor official who struggled to support the family. His mother did sewing, taking in orders from women for festival clothes, and making shoes for the children. She died when Zou was twelve. His father wanted Zou to study engineering, and sent him to Nan Yang College in Shanghai, but in 1919 Zou transferred to St. John's University, where he majored in English. Although he wanted to become a journalist, his first jobs after graduation were teaching English, then director of the editorial board of the China Vocational Education Society (中華職業教育社), headed by Huang Yanpei.
In 1926 Zou became editor of the society's journal, Shenghuo zhoukan (Life Weekly) and changed its mission from vocational education to political reporting and social criticism. The Vocational Society's target was young men who wanted to take advantage of schooling but often could not afford a university education and feared that they would not be able to enter a secure professional life. Zou, in the words of a recent historian, "turned out to be one of those legendary editors who found out just what made their readerships laugh, cry, and most importantly, come back the following week for more." Zou showed this talent for connecting with lower middle-class and working-class readers in the magazine's advice column, "The Readers' Mailbox" (Duzhe xinxiang), in which he gave advice on work, love, and politics. Readers addressed him simply as "Taofen" and his answers were both liberal in embracing progress and realistic in explaining the limited options a young woman had in the face of sexual harassment or discrimination, and the obstacles young men had in finding satisfying work in China's changing economy.
The magazine featured popular stories on modern heroes such as Albert Einstein, Marie Curie, Mohandas Gandhi, and Mustafa Kemal. Zou also embraced his success as a successful commercial entrepreneur and wrote enthusiastically about foreign business geniuses, such as George Eastman, who showed that capitalism could strengthen a nation. One of his first successes was a 1926 three-part series on Thomas A. Edison that described how this unschooled boy worked his way out of poverty into great wealth by hard work and struggle. The magazine increased in circulation under Zou's editorship from 2,800 in 1925 to 80,000 in 1930, and became a forum for political discussion and social debate.
The Japanese invasion and takeover of Manchuria in September 1931 galvanized criticism of the government. Zou used his magazine not only as a forum to urge the Nationalist Government offer stronger resistance but to launch a campaign to raise money for armies that were more resolute. These included Ma Zhanshan's troops in Manchuria and the independent-minded 19th Route Army in Fujian, which would stage a rebellion in 1934. The circulation of Zou's magazine grew to 155,000, but when the government began to crack down on opposition figures, Zou left China for Europe. He departed just as the government decided to close his magazine in December 1933. Zou's journey took him through Europe, then to the Soviet Union, where he attended a summer session at Moscow University, and finally to the United States, where he traveled May through July 1935.
Travels in the United States and the Soviet Union
Zou was impressed that the United States "has the material basis for making people happy" and with the "bountiful food and clothing". But overall he was critical. He reported as a correspondent to his Chinese readers that "the average American is like a child; he has to have a new toy to play with, whether it is Radio City or a mahjong set, and like a child as well, he quickly tires of playing with it. The average American always has to have fun, and this fun is somewhat different from pleasure and even more different from true happiness".