The Syracuse (N.Y.) Post-Standard: The communist regime in China may think it solved an inconvenient

The Syracuse (N.Y.) Post-Standard: The communist regime in China may think it solved an inconvenient problem when it agreed to let the popular writer Yu Jie and his family to go into exile last month. But with any luck, it merely exported a problem that will keep returning for the indefinite future.

Yu was an outspoken democracy advocate in a country whose rulers prefer profits to protests and are the world’s most skilled practitioners of free enterprise without democracy. His first book, “Fire and Ice,” released in 1998, was a literary sensation with its no-holds-barred criticism of Chinese politics — according to one critic, “undoubtedly the most provocative book of its kind to have appeared in years.”

Yu, still only 38, is a close ally of Liu Xiaobo, the dissident writer and leader who was sentenced to 11 years in prison in 2009 — and awarded the Nobel Peace Prize the following year.