He worked as a journalist after graduating from a three-year college in Heilongjiang Province.
Zhang participated in and became one of the leaders in the late stage of the Tiananmen Square Protests of 1989 and helped organize the hunger strike that accompanied it.
He was number 17 on the Chinese Most Wanted list for the 21 leaders of the Tiananmen Square protests.
He once escaped into the Soviet Union, but his request to be sent to a free country as a political refugee seeking asylum was refused.
During Zhang's time hiding, his first wife announced a divorce from him in the newspaper and abandoned their daughter.