[3] He attended college at Fudan University in Shanghai before moving to the United States to earn an MA and PhD from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in 1990.
[1] He considers himself patriotic, but is also critical of the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and believes the country should embrace democracy.
[5] In his book The Quest for Legitimacy in Chinese Politics, a New Interpretation he compared CCP leadership to the tsars of Russia leading up to the October Revolution,[3] "with charlatans and sycophants running amuckamok.
"[6] Xiang is also highly critical of Montesquieu and his view of democracy, which he sees as racialist and ignorant of China's historical structures of power and governance.
[3][5] Xiang argues that China had a relatively stable system of governance pilloried by many European thinkers—such as Montesquieu, Marx, Hegel, and Adam Smith—who understood Asia only as a negative example, unworthy of study in its own right.