By 1989, Xie was chairman of the Association of Chinese Students and Scholars in Germany e.V. In 1999 he founded the Chinese language journal "European Chinese News" that appeared until 2011. Since 2006 Xie has been editor of the Christian magazine "Overseas Campus".[3] In 2010, Xie was selected among the "Top 100 Chinese Public Intellectuals" by the Chinese newspaper Southern Weekly.[4] On 20 April 2013, the members of the Christian Social Union (CSU) in Bamberg selected Xie to the county board. He got 141 of 220 votes, the best result of all county board members.[5] In 2014, Xie was elected to the Bamberg City Council with the most votes of all CSU candidates.[6]
Xie is vice president of the Association of Chinese language writers in Europe and lives with his wife Shenhua Xie Zhang in Bamberg, where he runs the China Fan snack bar. He has been a German citizen since 2010.[7]
Xie's life has been described in several publications: the newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung (2001), the newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (2009), the book Bavaria – land in the heart of Europe (2015),[8] the book Bamberg – Portrait of a city (Gmeiner-Verlag, 2017), the newspaper The Huffington Post (2018, in German).[9][10]