Tang was educated at Northeastern University (China), where he received his BSc degree in chemistry in 1995. Then he attended the Institute of Metal Research in China and was awarded a MSc degree in inorganic materials in 1998.  In 2001, Tang was awarded a PhD in physical chemistry with research on heterogeneous catalytic conversion of NO to N, supervised by Tao Zhang at Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics (DICP), China