If an appeal to patriotic sentiment is how the stewards of China’s economy are planning to smooth over their policy shortcomings, they may need to come up with some other strategy.

In a widely circulated essay published this week, a retired patrician of China’s economic establishment accused the West of trying to ruin China’s development. In tone and substance, the piece echoed other current and former officials who’ve blamed unspecified “hostile Western forces” for instigating everything from feminist protests to last year’s stock-market swoon.

The message was promptly eviscerated on social media by many of the very people it was likely intended to convince.

The piece by Li Ruogu, the former chairman of a powerful policy bank and vice governor of China’s central bank, minced no words. Western nations, he said, are out to destroy China to maintain their own global hegemony.

“Developed nations badmouth China, saying China’s economic growth is too dependent on investment and exports, which have contributed to industrial imbalance, serious overcapacity, surging debt and financial risk,” Mr. Li wrote in the essay, which appeared in the September edition of China Herald, a state-owned monthly magazine often read in policy circles.

His solution? China should double down on an investment-led model of growth, he said.

“I’ve seen shameless people, but never this shameless,” read a post, written under the moniker White Mountain Red Snow, that was the most liked of close to 2,000 overwhelmingly negative comments on the piece left by users of popular social media site Weibo. “If you can’t do the job, make way for those who can.”

Such an explosion of criticism against an establishment figure is rare on Weibo, a site popular among white-collar urbanites that has been subject to increasing censorship in recent years. It also clashes with a widely held view that Chinese people are receptive to a rising tide of nationalist rhetoric being produced by the government and its supporters under President Xi Jinping.

Mr. Li didn't immediately respond to a message conveyed through the International Finance Forum, a Beijing-based think tank where he was listed as an executive vice president last year.

The essay itself is also somewhat unexpected. Mr. Li’s opinions are a sharp divergence from what’s become official policy in Beijing: that, in order to grow on a more sustainable trajectory, the economy needs to build a broader, more vibrant base of consumption and move away from its heavy reliance on state-led investment in industry and infrastructure.

China’s returns on investment have fallen sharply in recent years; last year, the economy got back 27 cents of growth on every dollar invested, compared with 59 cents in 2011, according to official data. Like a drug habit, it’s taking more and more for the Chinese economy to get the same hit.

Mr. Li, a 65-year-old with a master’s degree in public administration from Princeton University, isn’t particularly known for harboring a nationalist inclination. As a former deputy chief at the People’s Bank of China, he’s in an elite club whose members aren’t averse to airing their erudition, though most are better known for their reformist instinct.

Mr. Li spent the last 10 years of his career as the supremo of the Export-Import Bank of China, a policy lender which finances trade and investment abroad and thereby was closely involved in shaping China’s rise as a leader in the developing world.

In his essay, Mr. Li accused developed nations of “refusing to acknowledge China’s place in the global economy” and of “seeking to use discrimination to beat down China’s exports.” By his reckoning, the West is trying to change global trading rules by setting up multilateral platforms – Mr. Li pointed to the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a U.S.-led initiative – to supplant the World Trade Organization. The TPP, which faces uncertain prospects for approval by the U.S. Congress, would create a smaller grouping of nations that doesn’t include China, whose entry into the WTO in 2001 was hailed as its commitment to a rules-based global economy.

“Europe and the U.S. emphasize consumption because they have completed industrialization,” Mr. Li said. “This is not applicable to China. Investment is the main force to promote economic growth.”

The tenets of Mr. Li’s argument echo the emergence of an increasing assertiveness that has imbued a range of policies from Beijing’s territorial claims in the South China Sea to its stewardship of the fledgling Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, China’s answer to the World Bank.

Such views also provide cover for economic developments in the ground. Private investment has fallen, while state lending is powering a recovery in the same industries-- steel, cement, coal -- that produced so much waste that a third of capacity in key sectors now sits in disuse. Economic growth is paramount for Beijing; it has to fulfill a state target to double household incomes between 2010 and 2020. The quest also poses a question, unanswered by Mr. Li’s essay: At what cost?

Here is a selection of the most popular comments on the essay left by Weibo users as of Thursday:

“Can Western media even get in? And you say they’re misleading? You official media bombard everyone 24 hours every day, 365 days a year and you can’t dominate the discussion? You complain not enough people believe? And you waste the public’s money on this? Outside of North Korea, where else in the world do you have something as absurd as this?!” - Zhou Yuzhong, lawyer

“Right, and then their children and relatives all run to live in the West” - Zhang Kailai, business consultant

“Every time it’s Western forces who are forced to carry the pot. Can’t you come up with something new?” - Jiang Chuzhong, property consultant

“If the West hadn’t let you into the WTO, if the West hadn’t opened their markets to you, given you technology, given you huge amounts of investment, you wouldn’t even have a turd to eat.” - 成长之魅

“So as it turns out, it’s the West that’s been printing all that RMB you’re shoveling out?” - 满洲之心

“Hostile forces are like a brick, wherever you stick them they do the trick.” - 阴川蝴蝶猪

“Development is the product of our own sweat, but recession is the fault of Western forces. If you’re going to do propaganda, try a little harder.” - 把枪交给捷尔任斯基

“The second-generation reds at last make their economic views clear: give state-owned companies more loans and lower their taxes while completely ignoring their monopolistic inefficiencies and corruption; hold down the service industry, support SOE-centered manufacturing, completely ignore excess supply, low quality, high prices and a failure to innovate; suppress rising incomes and benefits for the salaried class, and completely ignore the wealth gap between the ruling class and regular people. In sum, he’s become the faithful spokesperson for the interest groups, expressing their true thoughts.” - Xie Wen, IT commentator

-- Chuin-Wei Yap and Josh Chin. Follow them on Twitter @YapCW and @joshchin