Yang Kuan (1914 − September 1, 2005) was a Chinese historian specializing in pre-Qin Dynasty Chinese history. He is considered an authority of the Warring States period, and his History of the Warring States, first published in 1955, remains the most authoritative treatment of the subject.

Yang Kuan was born in Qingpu County, Jiangsu Province (now Qingpu District of Shanghai) in 1914. He attended the prestigious Suzhou High School, whose teachers included famous scholars Lü Shuxiang and Ch'ien Mu, one of the greatest historians of modern China.

After high school Yang attended Kwang Hua University in Shanghai − a predecessor of today's East China Normal University − and graduated in 1936 with a degree in Chinese. At Kwang Hua he also studied history under the prominent historian Lü Simian.

Yang Kuan gained fame at a young age. In 1933, aged 19, he published his first essay Probing the Legend of Pangu. In 1939, just three years after graduating from college, Yang was invited by Gu Jiegang, founder of the Doubting Antiquity School, to contribute to Gu's influential compilation Debates on Ancient History (古史辨). In 1941, Yang's book-size Introduction to China's High Antiquity was published as part of the seventh and last volume of the Debates on Ancient History.

Yang is generally considered a member of the Doubting Antiquity School, as he argued that the pre-Xia Dynasty history recorded in ancient texts was "historization" of prehistoric mythology, a position that is widely accepted by today's historians. However, he disagreed with Gu Jiegang and Kang Youwei's view that ancient scholars such as Confucius and Liu Xin deliberately introduced falsehoods into historical texts, and held the opinion that it was a long process of natural evolution of ancient mythology. Gu later changed his position and accepted Yang's view. Yang further differed from Gu in that he also believed that the extant history of the Xia Dynasty was pure mythology.

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