Billionaire investor George Soros has warned that a surge in China’s debt is bringing the world’s second-largest economy on the brink of a financial crisis similar to one the U.S. faced in 2008.

“There is an eerie resemblance to what’s happening in China to what’s happened here leading up to the financial crisis in 2007-2008 and it is similarly fueled by credit growth,” Soros said at a round table hosted by Asia Society late Wednesday. “It’s eventually unsustainable. But it feeds on itself and it has a lot to do with real estate,” he said.

A collapse of a U.S. housing bubble in 2007 and the resulting upheaval in the banking sector triggered the failure of major financial institutions in 2008. While it was, in essence, a U.S.-centric event, the crisis had far-reaching implications around the world, depressing trade, investment and growth.

The U.S., and other parts of the world, is still digging its way out of the 2008 crisis.

China’s total social financing, a measure of credit in the economy, grew 15.8% in March to $22.4 trillion, according to data from The Wall Street Journal. That is more than twice its $10.4-trillion gross domestic product.

Analysts also have expressed concerns over China’s debt bubble.

“We have grown increasingly uneasy about China’s debt pile-up,” Sue Trinh, a currency analyst at RBC Capital Markets, said in a recent report. “Outstanding credit and new loan growth are at near-record levels on a three-month moving average basis.”

Meanwhile, the property market in China is heating up, thanks to the government’s accommodative policies. Housing sales rose 60.3% in the first quarter from a year earlier to $248.2 billion, according to the National Bureau of Statistics last week.

Soros earlier this year attracted Beijing’s ire by predicting that a hard landing in China is inevitable. The government responded to the famed investor’s dire forecast by attacking him in a newspaper editorial, “Declaring war on China’s currency? Ha ha,” underscoring China’s sensitivity to foreign criticism.

He isn't the only high-profile investor to raise the alarm on China’s debt growth. Kyle Bass, founder of Hayman Capital Management, in February announced a big bet against the Chinese yuan, citing the country’s mounting debt burden.

Their pessimism contrasts with Templeton Emerging Markets Group’s Executive Chairman Mark Mobius’ more measured view on the country. The emerging-market guru, in an interview with MarketWatch, cautioned hedge-fund managers against reading too much into the country’s recent economic turbulence.

Undoubtedly, China’s economic fortunes have waned since it posted double-digit economic growth only a few years ago. Its GDP growth has slowed to levels not seen in a quarter-century as the authorities press ahead with a plan to restructure from a manufacturing-dependent economy to a consumption-driven model.

To some extent, aggressive stimulus measures have helped to calm fears of an impending collapse of the Chinese economy. But as long as China continues to chase the twin goals of reforms while supporting economic growth, questions about the government’s policy priority will linger, fueling volatility in the financial markets. The Shanghai Composite Index SHCOMP, +2.06% , which enjoyed a period of calm after sharp losses earlier this year, has been retreating lately, as doubts about the economy’s resilience resurface.

“A fear arose that, now that a stimulus and credit-induced recovery in the economy has taken hold, the government may start to step on the brake in terms of stimulus and credit,” said Louis Kuijs, head of Asia economics at Oxford Economics.