 Between 1999 and 2010, he was a top regional official in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, serving first as the Communist Party Secretary of regional capital Urumqi and then Deputy Secretary of the Xinjiang regional Party Committee.Yang was born in Gaocheng County, Hebei in January 1953, near the city of Shijiazhuang.He followed his father Yang Zhaocai to Xinjiang where the family lived at and worked for the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps (XPCC).