After the Cultural Revolution, Zhang Lifan was educated in the Institute of Modern History of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (中国社科院近代史研究所).

[3] In an interview with NPR on the arrest of young Marxists fighting for workers rights, Zhang said "I think this shows China's Communist Party can no longer justify itself".

Zhang said further that young Marxists in China pose a conundrum for the country's leadership, whom he says only feign interest in Marxism to "maintain a guiding principle".

[4] In an interview with Deutsche Welle, Zhang said that the COVID-19 pandemic posed the greatest challenge in the Chinese Communist Party's 70-year history, after the Great Chinese Famine during Mao Zedong era and the Tiananmen Square Protests of 1989.

Zhang said that the Chinese government did an excellent job censoring details of the pandemic and is exploiting it to strengthen its control over society.