In 1977, the
People's Republic of China reinstated the National Higher Education Entrance Examination (
Gaokao) that had been suspended for 10 years due to the
Cultural Revolution. That year, Tang was admitted to
Peking University's Department of International Politics. After his graduation from Peking University in 1982, he went to the
United States for
graduate studies and earned an
MA in
political science from the
University of Kansas in 1985 and a
PhD in political science from the
University of Chicago in 1990. Between 1990 and 2009, Tang started his academic career in the Department of Political Science at the
University of Pittsburgh, where he rose through the ranks of
assistant professor,
associate professor, and
full professor. Between 2009 and 2019, he worked at the
University of Iowa and was appointed the C. Maxwell and Elisabeth M. Stanley Hua Hsia Professor of Political Science and International Studies and the Chair of the Department of Political Science. In 2019, Tang moved to
Hong Kong, and served as the Head and Chair Professor in the Division of Social Science at the
Hong Kong University of Science and Technology until 2022. In March 2022, he joined the
Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen in
Mainland China, where has since then been a Presidential Chair Professor and the Dean of the School of Humanities and Social Science. ==Academic work==