Guan was born in Taiyuan, Shanxi, on July 2, 1935, while his ancestral home is in Xiangfen County. His father was an engineer in water conservancy and railway construction. His mother was a primary school teacher. After the Marco Polo Bridge Incident broke out in 1937, Shanxi was colonised by the Imperial Japanese Army, Guan fled to Shaanxi with his mother and lived in a cave in the mountains of Yichuan County. He secondary studied at Beijing Huiwen Middle School. After studying Russian for a year in Beijing Russian Specialized School, Guan was sent to the Soviet Union to study at the Bauman Moscow State Technical University in 1953. He joined the Communist Party of China in 1956. He returned to China in 1959 and had a brief assignment to the Ninth Research Institute of the as a welder. In 1959 he went back to his alma mater and obtained a K.T.H. degree in 1963. When he returned to China, he served as a senior engineer at the Beijing Aeronautical Manufacturing Technology Research Institute (BAMTRI) (now AVIC Manufacturing Technology Institute). He was president of the China Welding Association from 1990 to 1995 and vice-president of the International Institute of Welding from 1992 to 1995.
