While Xue Yong lives in the U.K., I imagine he still has relatives in China and probably visits there frequently.  So if he really offended/scared the CCP with his writings, I imagine they could find ways to influence him.  Having said that, he is very well known in the Chinese blogosphere and no doubt has developed many relations outside of China, both factors which would become a real nuisance for the CCP if they wanted to muzzle or punish him.

I do not know much about him, so this is all purely speculative.  But my sense is that he is a prominent "mainstream" blogger/academic/commentator/intellectual (despite the title of his blog) who chooses to influence the system "from within".  If so, that would include getting oneself ejected from the system (i.e. by writing stuff that would piss off the CCP).  In this piece, pick up on this a little because of (what I feel to be) a certain rhetorical strategy in his argument:  First, reassure the reader (who is more than likely Chinese) that he is on their side by validating their viewpoint on the charged issue of moral responsibility for carbon emissions global warming.  Having thus gained the reader's trust, appeal to the familiar and "sensible/practical" logic of self-interest to plead the case for and gain further mass acceptability for policies that may cause inconvenience and even hardship for some Chinese in the short-term.  It's clear now that the guys calling the shots in China are on board with such policies.  But there may still be recalcitrant factions among the "überclass" --

State media cited experts as saying that policymakers have faced difficulty in getting intra-agency cooperation on various initiatives, including reduction of carbon emissions and raising energy efficiency to help combat global warming.

China sets up energy agency headed by PM - washingtonpost.com