Chang married Ma Yu-ying (馬育英) in 1913; because their first child was born in 1917, he later joked to have practiced family planning long before it became popular.

When Yuan Shikai attempted to restore the monarchy, Chang fled to Japan, finished his military training at the Imperial Japanese Army Academy in 1915, and then went to the Netherlands East Indies, where he taught in an overseas Chinese school.

Becoming a major general of the National Revolutionary Army at age 28, he later became a member of the Kuomintang's Central Executive Committee, mayor of Shanghai and president of Tongji University, governor of Hubei province and foreign minister.

In 1946, Chang, representing the national government, was a member of the Committee of Three (also known as the Marshall Mission) along with General George C. Marshall, then head of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Chinese Communist Party representative Zhou Enlai, which had been established in Nanjing in January 1946 to effect a Kuomintang-Communist truce and head off civil war.

Among his duties were planning the government's foreign policy and representing the president in Japan, Africa and Europe, including the Second Vatican Council in 1965.

In 1972, he played a large role in the difficult negotiations regarding Japan's switch of diplomatic recognition to the People's Republic of China.

[4] From 20 January 1990, when former Japanese Prime Minister Prince Naruhiko Higashikuni died until his own death, Chang was the world's oldest living former head of government.