Wang was born in Tongxin County, Ningxia, to a Hui Chinese family. After graduating from university, he went back to his hometown to work as an accountant and as a local Communist Youth League organizer. After the Cultural Revolution, he worked on hydraulics projects for a year. He entered Ningxia University in 1977 and majored in Chinese. He joined the Communist Party of China in 1981. After graduating, he became a propaganda official, serving in his home county. In January 1984 he was sent to work for the autonomous region's party organization in Yinchuan, where he climbed through the ranks with a series of administrative and research positions. He eventually was promoted the head the regional propaganda department and entered the regional party standing committee as a result. He also served as party chief of Yinchuan. Wang was long involved in Hui ethnic affairs, and has written many papers on the economy and culture of the Hui people. In 1988 he was sent as part of a delegation to Turkey to participate in an international Islamic culture conference. Wang made a name for himself as a resident expert in the economy of predominantly Islamic states, conducting extensive research on middle eastern countries. In September 2000, Wang was admitted into the Ethnic Affairs Institute of the Minzu University of China where he earned a doctorate studying the economic structure of Muslim countries. The Financial Times reported, in February 2019, that Wang had plagiarised 17 paragraphs from a prior academic work in his doctoral thesis presented in 2003 to the university. In 2004, Wang became Executive Vice Chairman of the Ningxia regional government, and on May 12, 2007 was named acting chairman of the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, confirmed in January 2008. After the 12th National People's Congress in 2013, Wang was appointed to head the State Ethnic Affairs Commission. During this time he had been pushing for legislation concerning halal certification. He was also named a Vice-Chairman of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, ascending to sub-national ranks. On April 2, 2015, Wang was named deputy head of the United Front Work Department, creating an unprecedented situation where two leaders of the department were of sub-national rank. Wang is an alternate member of the 16th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, and a full member of the 17th and 18th Central Committees. He is also the chairman of Ningxia Social Science Association, a member of the Chinese Ethnic Writers Association and a member of the Ningxia Writers Association.
