[2] After 1949, he held important diplomatic posts, serving as chargé d'affaires to the United Kingdom and ambassador to Mexico.

[3] His career culminated in the 1970s and 1980s, when he was appointed deputy director of the Central Investigation Department (the primary Chinese civilian intelligence agency at the time) from 1973 to 1982, and vice chairman and CCP committee secretary of the multi-billion China International Trust Investment Corporation (CITIC) from 1982 to 1987.

After the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937, Xiong was ordered by the Communist Party to rush to Changsha in order to sign up for the Hunan Youth Battlefield Service Corps headed by Li Fanglan in General Hu Zongnan's First Army, in the hope of successfully penetrating the Nationalist military.

Xiong had a long diplomatic career after returning to China, ultimately serving in key posts and alongside Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai, with whom he had a lifelong friendship.

Xiong died of cancer in Beijing in September 2005, at the age of 86, three years after his wife, Chen Xiaohua, with whom he had two children.