[5] Ye was one of the few Chinese students to study sociology after the discipline was suppressed for 20 years, becoming vice director of the Guizhou Academy of Social Sciences.

He condemned the anti-religious excesses of the Cultural Revolution, and recommended that China loosen its grip on religion as part of the reform and opening up.

On the other hand, Ye vindicates the CCP's suspicions about foreign missionaries in Europe's colonial past with China, and religion's role in overthrowing communist states in the Revolutions of 1989.

[4] That same year, Ye presided over the enthronement of Gyaincain Norbu, the controversial government choice for the 11th Panchen Lama of Tibetan Buddhism.

[8] The Ministry of Civil Affairs of the People's Republic of China banned the controversial Falun Gong belief system in July 1995.

Ye gave a press conference three months later, accusing Falun Gong of being a doomsday cult, antiscientific, anti-medicine, of harassing people en masse, and of tax evasion.

He insisted that the government had to act against Falun Gong on behalf of science, civilization, and human rights,[9] although he promised that the police would not persecute people who practiced alone in their homes.

[13] In practice, this meant the attempted eradication of Chinese Catholicism loyal to Rome (which he considered "colonial") and not to the official Catholic Church in China.

[18][19] In the runup to the 2008 Beijing Olympics in February, Ye Xiaowen traveled to the United States to address Bush administration concerns about Chinese religious policy.

He met with Undersecretary of State Paula Dobriansky, ambassador for religious freedom John Hanford, and retired Archbishop of Washington Theodore McCarrick.

[23] The Catholic Church-affiliated Asia News was especially critical of Ye's legacy, calling him "a perfect representative of the idea that religions should be subservient to the power and supremacy of the Party".