He traveled to Japan on a scholarship to the Tokyo Shimbu Gakko and subsequently graduated from 9th class of the Imperial Japanese Army Academy, with a specialty in the cavalry, in 1909.

After the death of Manchurian warlord Zhang Zuolin, Zang supported the Chinese Reunification Movement and was appointed governor of Liaoning Province in 1930.

He was part of the Northeast Supreme Administrative Council or "Self-Government Guiding Board that made plans for a new "independent" State of Manchuria to be established in February 1932.

In March 1935 he was Emperor Puyi's first choice to replace Zheng Xiaoxu as Prime Minister of Manchukuo (although Zhang Jinghui was appointed instead at the insistence of the Japanese Kwantung Army leadership).

He was initially held in custody in Siberia, but was extradited to the People's Republic of China in 1950, where he died of illness in captivity at the War Criminals Management Centre in Fushun, Liaoning, on 13 November 1956.