1993-1995: Zhou Shifeng pursued a Master’s degree in Law at Peking University.

1995: Zhou began his legal career, working in various law firms and participating in different civil rights and defence cases, including the notable Shijiazhuang 3.16 Bombing Case. During this period, he also earned a doctoral degree from the Faculty of Law at Macau University of Science and Technology.

April 2007: Zhou Shifeng established his own law firm, initially named Beijing Zhou Shifeng Law Firm, which was later renamed Beijing Fengrui Law Firm in 2010. Prior to his detention in 2015, Zhou Shifeng and his colleagues at Fengrui represented clients in a wide variety of well-known human rights cases. As Zhou Shifeng himself recounted, these cases were entrusted to Fengrui's lawyers by clients who were familiar with the firm's esteemed reputation.

October 2014: Zhou Shifeng was appointed by the German newspaper Die Zeit as the defense lawyer for Zhang Miao, a news assistant for the newspaper’s Beijing correspondent. Zhang Miao was arrested in October 2014 for reporting on the Hong Kong Occupy Central movement and was subjected to torture while confined in a secretly operated solitary cell. Her arrest drew significant attention in Germany, the EU, and the USA.

10 July 2015: The release of Zhang Miao on 9 July 2015, after nine months of detention without charges, brought temporary relief. However, the joy was short-lived as Zhou Shifeng, her defending lawyer, was detained the following day, marking the onset of the 709 Crackdown.

On 10 July 2015, while asleep, Zhou Shifeng was forcibly taken from his room by plainclothes officers, who failed to provide any identification or legal documents. Claiming to be from the Tianjin Public Security Bureau, they handcuffed him, hooded him with a black bag, taped his mouth, and abducted him. Initially taken to a Beijing detention centre's entrance, he was later moved to a room on the third floor of an unknown building. His entire detention process was documented – on blank legal forms, underscoring the lack of legal due process. The location of Zhou Shifeng’s detention, unknown to both him and his family, qualified it as a ‘black jail’ – an unofficial place of detention operating outside the legal framework.

During his detention, Zhou Shifeng endured continuous threats and insults from the officers, with one threatening, “Zhou Shifeng, we will skin you alive!” He was coerced to sit in a tiny square on the floor, measuring less than half a square meter, for nine and a half hours each day, and he was often interrogated until late at night.

Zhou Shifeng disclosed, following his release, that during the interrogation process after he was detained, the Tianjin Public Security fabricated records. They attributed statements made by others on Weibo associated with him. A sentence from an original recording was manipulated by a 709 Special Case Group of public security officers into a written form of evidence, and it formed the core accusation against Zhou Shifeng. This tampered evidence became the basis for convictions in the entire 709 case. Before the court session, prosecutors coerced Zhou Shifeng to describe a casual dinner as an “anti-(Chinese) system meeting,” which the court judgment eventually described as a “meeting to subvert state power.”

In addition, while detained in the black jail, Zhou Shifeng was intimidated and discouraged from hiring a lawyer. Lawyers appointed by families of detained human rights lawyers to handle cases related to the 709 Crackdown were threatened and barred from properly performing their legal duties. In the days following his detention, lawyer Yang Jinzhu, appointed by family members to defend Zhou Shifeng, faced a blockade at his home by Public Security officers and had to fight his way to Tianjin. Upon arrival, the case officers impeded his attempts to meet Zhou Shifeng. Wang Shaoguang, another lawyer hired by Zhou Shifeng’s family, was similarly prevented from fulfilling his legal role. Subsequently, officers of his case informed Zhou Shifeng that lawyers had been assigned to each detainee in the 709 Crackdown.

8 January 2016: Zhou Shifeng was formally arrested for subverting state power. In subsequent months, Zhou Shifeng’s strong demands to change the appointed lawyers were ignored.

15 July 2016: The Tianjin Municipal People's Procuratorate Second Branch Office formally charged Zhou Shifeng for subverting state power.

August 2016: According to Zhou Shifeng’s account, before the court session took place in August 2016, public security officers led by the head of the detention centre entered the detention centre and forced Zhou Shifeng to sign a pre-written final statement they had prepared. When Zhou Shifeng did not adhere to read this fabricated statement in court, he was denied his right to a final statement. Furthermore, before the commencement of the court session, the judges of his case threatened Zhou Shifeng, asking him to abandon any hope and confess. His comments during the court’s cross-examination, particularly about the altered audio evidence as he challenged the prosecutors, were intentionally omitted from the judgment.

4 August 2016: The Tianjin No. 2 Intermediate People's Court delivered its first-instance verdict, convicting Zhou Shifeng for subverting state power and sentencing him to seven years of fixed-term imprisonment, with a subsequent deprivation of political rights for five years. On the day before the trial, the court claimed that Zhou Shifeng did not wish for his family members and friends to attend the hearing. However, it was revealed that his family members wanted to travel to Tianjin for the trial, but they were restricted from leaving their home by the police.
Before the verdict was handed down, Zhou Shifeng was informally consulted by public security officers in a temporary rest room regarding whether he would agree on a seven-year sentence, signifying a pre-trial determination of his sentence, and that the sentence was determined not by judges but public security officers responsible for his case.

During Detention (2016-2022): Zhou Shifeng faced a series of injustices and maltreatment as he served his sentence in prison. Every complaint that Zhou Shifeng submitted against the public security offices or the prison facility went ignored. Zhou Shifeng's imprisonment was also marked by a continuous denial of family phone calls. For six years, Zhou Shifeng was restricted from making phone calls to his family members. He was also not allowed to speak to any inmate in the prison, and he was prohibited from writing anything, even drawing, for three years. He was also refused a sentence reduction despite his eligibility

14 September 2016: Experts from the UN Human Rights Office issued a formal communication to China (UA CHN 7/2016), expressing concerns about multiple human rights violations against Zhou Shifeng. These included the deprivation of his right to a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal. They also criticised the use of incommunicado detention against Zhou Shifeng, stating that it "jeopardises the presumption of innocence, may facilitate the perpetration of torture or other forms of cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment or punishment, and amounts in itself to ill-treatment."

1 February 2018: The Beijing Municipal Bureau of Justice publicly announced the revocation of Zhou Shifeng’s legal practice license while he was serving a sentence.
Also in 2018, Zhou Shifeng complained public security officer, Liu Xiaoyu, for multiple serious crimes, but prison guards refused to transfer the materials as legally required. Another complaint against the 709 Special Case Group was similarly stifled.

July 2018: Zhou Shifeng issues complaint documents against the Tianjin Public Security Bureau, but these were withheld.

24 September 2022: Zhou Shifeng was released after serving his sentence. After his release, Zhou Shifeng returned to his home in Beijing and began documenting and exposing the injustice and non-compliance with procedures that he came across during his detention, trial and prison sentence.

6 December 2022: Zhou Shifeng released “The True Story of the 709 Major Incident,” revealing the injustice and persecution that people came across during the 709 Crackdown, and also condemning Fu Zhenghua, former Deputy Minister of Public Security and Deputy Communist Party Secretary of the Ministry of Public Security, and Sun Lijun, former Vice-Minister of Public Security and vice-president of the China Law Society, for orchestrating the 709 Crackdown. In 2022, Fu Zhenghua and Sun Lijun were both handed a suspended death sentence that was commuted to life imprisonment after two years, with no possibility of parole, for taking bribes. They were deprived of political rights for life and all their property was also confiscated.

14 February 2023: Zhou Shifeng submitted a petition to the Tianjin No. 2 Intermediate People's Court, which was rejected. On the same day, he went to the court's archive to photocopy the case file of his previous conviction of subverting state power, only to find that the file was not in the computer records. He also found that his WeChat posts and group chats were permanently blocked.
 
28 February 2023: Zhou Shifeng established “709 Consulting Group Limited Liability Company” in Hainan Province. Following this, the Haikou City Public Security Bureau summoned two friends who had assisted Zhou in setting up the company, before demanding the company's dissolution and forbidding them from providing office space and registration services to him.

19 April 2023: Zhou Shifeng found himself under strict 24-hour surveillance during the visit of German Foreign Minister Baerbock to China. Zhou Shifeng, speaking about his life post-release, reported being subjected to intense surveillance by national security forces. He was closely guarded by three individuals daily, and any attempt to leave his residence was reported. The surveillance extended to his residence, corridors, and the surrounding neighbourhood, with every movement he made being closely monitored.

9 May 2023: Zhou Shifeng wrote a letter to the Supreme People's Court, requesting a retrial of the 709 case.

14 May 2023: On Mother's Day, Zhou Shifeng faced obstructions in his attempt to visit the elderly mother of a friend.

03 July 2023: In the lead-up to the 8th anniversary of the 709 Crackdown, Zhou Shifeng was awarded with the 709 Human Rights Lawyer Award 2023, recognising his enduring commitment and significant contributions to the field of human rights law and advocacy.