China is upset with “speculators.”

You see it’s not that China’s economy is “landing hard” and it’s not that a massive yuan devaluation is almost a foregone conclusion. No, it’s that “manipulators,” “speculators,” financial “predators,” and all sorts of other nefarious foreign meddlers are colluding to destabilize the country’s economy and financial markets for personal gain.

If it were up to the Beijing, this gang of evildoers would be rounded up and jailed until they agreed to confess their “crimes” on live television. Either that or they’d simply disappear into the bowels of the Politburo. Unfortunately for Beijing, the Chinese can’t arrest George Soros (who one Chinese media outlet recently called a “crocodile” for daring to place a bet against the yuan) and they can’t arrest Kyle Bass either.

As regular readers are no doubt aware, Bass is betting on a meltdown in China’s mammoth banking sector which he says will need to recapitalized. China, Bass figures, doesn’t have nearly enough in reserves to pay for a banking sector bailout and will thus need to do QE on a massive scale to plug the holes. That, he says, will eventually lead the currency to fall 30-40%.

China has fired back at Bass and at Soros over the past several weeks via a series of hilariously absurd “Op-Eds”, the latest of which (out this morning) is entitled “Groundless, unfair to blame China for hardship.” “Pessimists misunderstand the Chinese economy, or they just choose to turn a blind eye to the bright spots that really matter,” it reads.

Right. You want to focus on “the bright spots that really matter” instead of depressing things that reallydon’t matter, like collapsing exports or the fact that the banking sector may be sitting on $3.5 trillion in souring loans.