July 8 (Bloomberg) — Billionaire George Soros called China “a positive force” that will help drive growth as the world emerges from the current economic crisis.

“For China, the crisis is something affecting them from the outside,” said Soros, 78, in a Bloomberg Radio interview. “They can stimulate their economy. They have reserves. They have a trade surplus. They will be one of the motors of the world economy.”

Soros, who is no longer involved in the day-to-day operation of his $24 billion New York-based Soros Fund Management LLC, has said the growth rate of the last 25 years won’t resume.

The International Monetary Fund said the global economic rebound next year will be stronger than it forecast in April as the financial system stabilizes. The Washington-based lender said in a revised forecast released today that the world economy will expand 2.5 percent in 2010, compared with its April projection of 1.9 percent.

China’s growth is forecast to accelerate to 8.5 percent next year, a percentage point more than the IMF expected in April, after slowing to 7.5 percent this year.

Soros warned that the current crisis won’t be solved only by boosting consumer and business confidence. U.S. banks are still holding a lot of bad assets and that will weigh on the economy, he said.

“There is a part of reality that can’t be manipulated,” he said.

Soros’s Quantum Endowment Fund has returned almost 18 percent this year through May after climbing 8 percent in 2008.

The financial crisis, which started with the collapse of the U.S. property market in 2007, has triggered more than $1.47 trillion of writedowns and credit losses at banks and other financial institutions and sent the global economy into its first recession since World War II, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Hedge funds are largely unregistered pools of capital that cater to wealthy individuals and institutions and allow managers to participate substantially in profits from investments. They try to make money in rising as well as falling markets.