Not long after billionaire George Soros forecast a so-called hard landing for the Chinese economy, Beijing fired back by calling out the high-profile investor, warning him of betting against its currency, according to media reports Tuesday.

“Soros’ challenge against the renminbi and Hong Kong dollar is unlikely to succeed, there is no doubt about that,” said a government official in an opinion piece widely cited by several media outlets.

The article headlined, ”Declaring war on China’s currency? Ha ha,” was published by the People’s Daily, the official newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party which is widely viewed as Beijing’s propaganda tool.

A translation of the Mandarin version of the editorial linked by ZeroHedge includes references to the U.S. suffering from a “Dutch disease” and “financial predators.”

Reports of the People’s Daily’s article follow Soros’ recent prediction that a precipitous slowdown in the Chinese economy is inevitable.

"A hard landing is practically unavoidable,” Soros told Bloomberg Television last week on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. “I’m not expecting it, I’m observing it,” he said, referencing his China outlook.

Although Soros hasn’t directly threatened to bet against China’s yuan, his reputation as the investor who broke the Bank of England might have been enough to draw Beijing’s attention.

Soros has been vocal about China’s recent economic woes, going as far as to warn that global markets are headed for a crisis akin to 2008 as China scrambles to find a new growth model.