He was a professor of Liaoning University known for his research on the writer Xiao Jun.
[1][2] Zhang graduated from the Department of Chinese Language and Literature of Peking University in 1960, and worked at the Institute of Latin American Studies of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
[3] During the Cultural Revolution, he was sent to perform manual labour at a May Seventh Cadre School in Shenqiu County, Henan, from 1969 to 1973.
[1][3] He was known as the leading scholar of the Liaoning writer Xiao Jun, whom he had met in the 1950s and after the Cultural Revolution.
[3] He entered politics in 1989, when he was appointed vice mayor of Shenyang, the capital of Liaoning.