Wang was born in Ürümqi, Xinjiang, China in 1955. His family moved to a village in Henan province in the 1970s, during the Cultural Revolution, his mother was imprisoned by local government for "historical questions". Wang was raised by his paternal grandmother. Before graduating from primary school, he was assigned to work as a worker in a factory for 8 years. After resuming the college entrance examination, he entered Wuhan University, majoring in biochemistry, where he graduated in 1982. After college, he was accepted to the Chinese Academy of Sciences, he attended the China-United States Biochemistry Examination and Application (CUSBEA) and was sent abroad to study at the expense of the Chinese government with his wife Xinnian Dong. Wang earned his doctor's degree in biology from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1986. He did post-doctoral research at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1987 to 1992 under Professor Robert Weinberg.
