Yang was born in Beijing in 1963 with ancestral roots in Zizhong County, Neijiang, Sichuan province.
Since 1998, Yang has become the general designer of numerous aircraft, and he is also one of the founders of fully digitized fly-by-wire control systems in China, a feat that greatly helped him become general designer of aircraft.
Under his leadership, it took less than four years to achieve a maiden flight from scratch for FC-1, a record that remains unbroken in China today, and this was achieved while Yang was also the general designer of the Chengdu J-10 double seated version.
Due to the nature of his work, Yang's achievements were kept secret and it wasn't until January 2007 that Chengdu J-10 began to appear in a very limited fashion on official Chinese governmental websites, such as the Xinhua News Agency.
Recipient of Pakistan's high civilian honour Sitara-e-Imtiaz in 2017 for his services to design JF-17 Aircraft.