George Soros, the man who famously broke the pound, has been warned off going to “war on the renminbi” by Beijing, as China’s authorities again confronted tumbling stocks and accelerating capital flight.

The warning, on the front page of China’s Communist party mouthpiece, comes as Beijing struggles to stem capital outflows and support its currency. China’s policy response — through intervention to prop up the renminbi — has already scythed its foreign reserves by about $700bn over the past 18 months to $3.3tn.

“Soros’s war on the renminbi and the Hong Kong dollar cannot possibly succeed — about this there can be no doubt,” read the opinion piece in the People’s Daily, which was penned by a commerce ministry researcher under the headline: “Declaring war on China’s currency? Ha ha.”