[7] Some of his political views, such as the "Superiority of the China Model" and the OBOR is "an unprecedented change in five thousand years", have been criticized by scholars such as Xiang Lanxin for not being in line with historical facts.

[9] Soon after, the college entrance examinations resumed with the end of the Cultural Revolution, and in 1977 Zhang was admitted to the foreign languages department of Fudan University, where he persuaded the dean to sit in on courses in international politics.

[14]: 201 Since 2019, Zhang has been the host of "This is China" (这就是中国), a lecture on the virtues of the Chinese government, launched by Dragon Television, a state-run TV channel.

"[17] According to Zhang, Chinese should be more vocal in praising their country's system and its benefits tell China's story with pride in order to increase its discourse power.

[17] According to Zhang:[17] One of the most common forms of Western discourse and cultural infiltration of China is to instill certain ‘aesthetic standards’ (审美标准) into Chinese intellectual elites through various forms of exchange or awards, and then to use these Westernized intellectual elites to monopolize Chinese aesthetic standards, and even Chinese standards in the humanities, arts, and social sciences – in this way achieving a kind of ‘cultural training’ and ‘ideological hegemony’ (意识形态霸权) over China.Zhang describes the Western system as having its own merits and defects, "but its systemic defects now start to eat away its strengths".

[18][19] On May 17, 2016, Zhang attended the National Symposium on the Work of Philosophy and Social Sciences chaired by CCP general secretary Xi Jinping.