A native of Hefei in Anhui Province, Wang Yitang passed the imperial examination in 1904 for the highest degree jinshi; however, he hoped to study about the military.

In September he was sent on a government scholarship to Japan, where he attended the Tokyo Shimbu Academy, a military preparatory school.

After graduating he entered the Imperial Japanese Army’s 9th Artillery Regiment based in Kanazawa; however, he found that military life was not to his liking, so he transferred to Hosei University.

After that he successively held the positions of Director of the Department for Military Affairs (兵部主事), Military Counselor to the office for the Viceroy of Three Northeast Provinces (on that time, the Viceroy was Xu Shichang), Commander of the 1st Brigade of the Jilin Army (吉林陸軍第1協統統領) and Councilor to the Training Office of the Jilin.

After the Xinhai Revolution broke out, Wang--through the introduction of Xu Shichang--joined the secretariat of Yuan Shikai.

He resisted the Kuomintang’s Northern Expedition; however, with the collapse of the Beiyang Government in 1928, Wang fled to the foreign settlement in Tianjin and sought asylum within the protection of the Japanese Concession.

Following the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War, Wang Kemin established the Provisional Government of the Republic of China in December 1937.

Following the surrender of Japan in World War II, and the subsequent collapse of the Reorganized National Government of the Republic of China, Wang Yitang was arrested by Chiang Kai-shek's men at a hospital in Beijing on December 5, 1945.