Zhang Zhou, male, Han nationality, is a native of Xingtang, Hebei Province. He was born in September of 1954 and is a graduate of the Central Party School. He graduated from the Agricultural Machinery Department of Bayi Agricultural College in 1982. An engineer, he joined the CPC in 1985.
While he is from Hebei Province, Zhang has spent the bulk of his career in Xinjiang. In 1971, he traveled to the region to become a worker in the Yecheng Maintenance Division before leaving to spend three years with the Kashi Agricultural Machinery Manufacturing and Maintenance Factory.
In the 1980s, he worked as the deputy director and later the director of the Hutubi Stud Husbandry. The short stint managing a livestock husbandry company was subsequently followed by a series of Bayingguoleng Prefecture government positions. He was deputy chief executive, deputy Party secretary, and Party secretary in the prefecture before ascending to the vice-chairmanship of the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region in 1998.