George Soros probably shouldn¡¯t expect any warm invitations to Beijing ¡ª not with the much-reviled short seller warning of a giant Chinese crash.
The billionaire first shook a major government in September 1992, when he led an attack on the British pound. For his role in humiliating London and forcing John Major¡¯s government to exit the European exchange-rate mechanism ¡ª essentially the euro ¡ª Soros reportedly netted $2 billion. Soros made a bundle off America¡¯s subprime debt crisis as well. Here in Asia, his legend has loomed large since 1997, when Malaysia¡¯s then-Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad accused him, bizarrely, of heading a Jewish conspiracy to spark an Asian crisis.
Now Soros has his eye on China. In a Jan. 2 op-ed for Project Syndicate, Soros didn¡¯t say whether he¡¯s shorting China. But he did connect the dots in a way that can¡¯t make President Xi Jinping happy. To Soros, the main risk facing the world isn¡¯t the euro, the U.S. Congress or a Japanese asset bubble, but a Chinese debt disaster that¡¯s unfolding in plain sight.
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