Zhou Senguan was born in Changzhou, Jiangsu in 1920. In his early years, he worked as an apprentice in Changzhou Minfeng Spinning Mill.

In the early years of the War of Resistance Against Japan, he successively served in the National Government Military Committee's wartime cadre training corps and the National Government Military Committee's civilian inspection and guidance corps. In the early 1940s, he first worked as an actor in the Zhejiang Provincial Theater Company, then in the Taxation Office of the Ministry of Finance of the National Government, and also served as the tax director. He came to Nanjing in 1947 and served as the chief dispatching officer of Capital Automobile Company.