George Soros probably shouldn't expect any warm invitations toBeijing—not with the much-reviled short seller warning of a giantChinese crash.

The billionaire first shook a major government in September1992, when he led an attack on the British pound. For his role inhumiliating London and forcing John Major's government to exit theEuropean exchange-rate mechanism—essentially the euro—Sorosreportedly netted $2 billion. Soros made a bundle off America'ssubprime debt crisis as well. Here in Asia, his legend has loomedlarge since 1997, when then-Malaysian Prime Minister MahathirMohamad accused him, bizarrely, of heading a Jewish conspiracy tospark an Asian crisis.

Now Soros has his eye on China. In a Jan. 2 op-ed for Project Syndicate, Soros didn't say whetherhe's shorting China. But he did connect the dots in a way thatcan't make President Xi Jinping happy. To Soros, the main riskfacing the world isn't the euro, the U.S. Congress, or a Japaneseasset bubble, but a Chinese debt disaster that's unfolding in plainsight.