Wang Yichuan was president of the School of Arts, Peking University, and a doctoral supervisor. He was a specially invited professor for the 2005 Chang Jiang Scholars Programme by the Ministry of Education. He was honoured with the Master Teacher Award of Teaching for the Fifth Institutions of Higher Education by the Ministry of Education. He is vice president of the Chinese Association of Literary and Art Theory, vice president of the Chinese Society for Aesthetics and director of the Aesthetic Cultural Committee, vice chairman of the Beijing Film Association, and member of the China Film Association, and deputy director of the Higher Education Film Theory Review Committee.

His research fields include art theory, aesthetics, film and television criticism, Chinese modern literature, and more. 

He has experience in scientific research as chief expert of the major National Social Science Fund project Studies on the ‘Development Strategy of China’s Soft Cultural Power’, and chief expert of ‘Sinicization of Western Literary Theory and Construction of Chinese Literary Theory’, a key project of the Philosophy and Social Science of the Ministry of Education.

His many works include The Third Generation of Beijing-Flavour Literature, Promoting Poems to Learn Phrases, The Occurrence of Chinese Modernity Experience, China Image Poetics, Record of Speeches on Literary Theory, Rhetoric Aesthetics, The End of Zhang Yimou Myth, Typical Case of China Modern Charisma, Linguistic Utopia, Chinese Image and Modernity Complex, An Introduction to Chinese Image Aesthetics, Instant Becoming of Meaning, Road to the Article, Theory of Aesthetic Experience, and more. Of them, The End of Zhang Yimou Myth won first prize at the First Chinese Collegial Association for Visual Art, China Image Poetics won third prize at the Second Humanities and Social Science’s Excellent Academic Achievement Award of Higher Education, The Occurrence of Chinese Modernity Experience won third prize at the Second Humanities and Social Science’s Excellent Academic Achievement Award of Higher Education, and Linguistic Utopia won second prize at the Fourth Philosophy and Social Science’s Excellent Academic Achievements of Beijing Municipality.

He has published approximately 200 academic papers. Of them, the article Modernity Literature won Literary Review's Excellent Paper Award, and the article Towards Rhetoric Aesthetics won the 20-Year Excellent Literary Theory Paper Award from the New Era of China Society for Chinese and Foreign Literary Theories.