George Soros tempers praise for Beijing with warning on risks

Billionaire investor George Soros, who has fallen foul of governments as far afield as Malaysia and Britain during a 60-year career, has praised China's system of financial regulation. But he warned that Beijing faces "exceptional difficulties" in its economic transition in the near term.

Speaking in an interview, the Hungarian-American financier, 83, also cautions against "overconfidence" among Chinese officials, and advises against investors entering some of China's hottest asset markets in the short term.

"I hold China's financial regulatory system in very high regard," he said in Hong Kong.

Soros is perhaps best known as "the man who broke the Bank of England" when he shorted the pound in the British currency crisis of 1992, effectively forcing Britain out of the European exchange-rate mechanism, a precursor to the euro.

He also drew the ire of former Malaysian prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad, who suggested in 1997 that Soros was part of a wider Jewish conspiracy and responsible for the Asian crisis.

He is now retired, he says, and is not directly involved in the daily operations of the hedge fund firm he founded, Soros Fund Management.