Zhao Hongben (1915-2000) was born in Shanghai. Starting in the early 1930s, he was active both as a publisher and as a designer of more than 120 comic strips. From 1950 onward, he was engaged in designing comic strips for Xinhua shudian [新华书店, New China Bookstores], the East China People's Publishing House (1951), and the Shanghai People's Fine Arts Publishing House (1956). He retired in 1985.

Zhao's specialities were comic strips and Chinese painting. He was awarded a prize for the poster 'Monkey thrice beats the White Bone Demon' from 1977, a scene from the serial cartoon with the same name that he first published in 1963. It is seen as one of his representative works.