At the end of Yuan Dynasty, Wang Guangyang had achieved the highest ranking on the Imperial Examinations, but had failed to find employment.
Suitably impressed, Zhu recruited Wang,[2] and appointed him as a local magistrate in his newly established Taiping fu (now Dangtu County, Anhui).
[3] After a few years rising through the ranks of civil administration, Wang was charged with managing requisitions for Chang Yuchun's military campaigns which helped establish the Ming dynasty.
In the third year of his reign, 1370, Li Shanchang – the most powerful and respected individual in the bureaucracy[5] – fell ill and was unable to work, leaving the Imperial Secretariat without a manager.
Wang Guangyang was in Shaanxi at the time, and was summoned to the capital to take the position Vice Chancellor of the Left (左丞) to cover Li's workload.
[6] So Yang suggested to the censor Liu Bing (劉炳) that he should impeach Wang for "failing to uphold his mother" (奉母無狀).
Considering further that Wang had not reported the treachery of his co-worker Yang Xian, and that during his early career in Jiangxi he had sheltered Zhu Wenzheng (朱文正, a nephew and general of the Hongwu Emperor who had failed to respond to his summons after losing an important battle and being slandered as disloyal during the Ming conquest of Yuan), the emperor executed Wang Guangyang as part of the Hu Weiyong case.
[11] A decade after Wang's death, numerous associates of Li Shanchang were executed along with their family members by the Hongwu Emperor.