After the 2008 Tibetan unrest, Ye published an opinion piece in a December edition of "China Daily". Entitled, "Shangri-La has changed and Tibetans know it", he criticized those who thought themselves "'experts' [about Tibet] after reading a mere handful of texts". Quoting from Lost Horizon, the work that introduced the concept of Shangri-La, he said that Tibet would only become "an everlasting peaceful land" if separatist agitation were quashed and all ethnic groups in Tibet developed equally.