Wang joined them, but seemed more interested in theoretical discussions than their campaigns to support political prisoners or civil rights. The League dissolved when one of its leading organizers was assassinated outside League headquarters in Shanghai, but the debate continued. Near the end of 1935, Wang, Zou Taofen, Shen Junru and several others organized the Shanghai Cultural Salvation Council. In 1936 he became head of the Shanghai Federation of National Salvation as cultural propaganda officer. He urged the Nationalist government to stop internal repression, to free political prisoners, and to put up resistance to the Japanese. In June 1936, Wang, Shen, Zou, Zhang Naiqi, Li Gongpu, Sha Qianli, and Shi Liang were arrested in the famous Seven Gentlemen Incident. While in jail, Wang revised the manuscript for his book "An Analysis of the China Problem", whose publication government censors had prevented, and worked on "Huangmiao ji" (Absurd Notes). At the trial in April 1937 Huang argued that indicting his group for the crime of criticizing the government assumed that to criticize the government was to weaken the nation. This assumption, Wang told the court, ignored modern principles of political theory because the government derived its power from the people. When the seven were released on bail in July, they proclaimed that "one is not wrong to for wanting to save the country." In March 1938, Wang offered a politics class at Jiangxi School of Education as Professor and Director, responsible for the training of cadres in Jiangxi Province during the Anti-Japanese War. In September, in Ji'an he founded "Daily Front", and was elected to the National Political Council. After the war he founded the Shanghai Free Press, also served as private legal counsel. During these years, Wang was active in the China Democratic League, many of whose members had been human rights advocates since the 1920s. In December 1948, Chiang Kai-shek ordered the seizure of Chu Anping's liberal Shanghai magazine "Guancha" (Observer), and the arrest of the staff. Wang Zaoshi organized pressure on the authorities and the prisoners were released in February of the following year. When the People's Liberation Army entered Shanghai, Wang was active in the "patriotic democracy movement" and in 1951, was made history professor at Fudan University and director of its Institute of World History. In the mid-1950s, Wang, along with older, liberal colleagues such as Fei Xiaotong, Chu Anping, Chen Renbing, and Luo Longji, was cautious in his criticisms of the political situation, but in 1957 joined the 100 Flowers Movement, in which liberals, seemingly at Mao's invitation, became more forthright.