As Consul General, Young was responsible for the Hong Kong and Macao special administrative regions.

Young was born in Washington, D.C. and moved to Taiwan at age 12, where his father served as a military adviser to the Republic of China Army in Kaohsiung from 1963 to 1965.

He was the Ambassador to the Kyrgyz Republic (now Kyrgyzstan), and Director of the American Institute in Taiwan in Taipei.

[5] Young married Barbara A. Finamore, an attorney who manages the China Program at the Natural Resources Defense Council, in 1983.

[10][11] In comments published in the pro-Beijing and Communist Party paper Wen Wei Po, Lew Mon-hung, a Hong Kong member of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, has criticized Young, stating that he had covertly instigated and planned the Hong Kong Autonomy Movement, which Lew compared to the Taiwan independence movement, as Young was the then Consul General of the United States in Hong Kong, in an attempt to split Hong Kong away from China.