Before but not After

Sorry comrade, we have a free press in Hong Kong
18 July 2008
(c) 2008 South China Morning Post Publishers Limited, Hong Kong. All rights reserved.

Sorry comrade, we have a free press in Hong Kong
Talk about closing the stable door after the horse has bolted.
Fifteen minutes after the China Banking Regulatory Commission's international department director-general Han Mingzhi had delivered his speech to a Hong Kong forum yesterday, journalists were told they could not report it.
Sorry comrades, we know it was called the "Thought Leadership Forum", but that's not the way things work here. With cable television and newswire services covering the event "live", the CBRC instruction was doomed to fall on deaf ears.
As one wag put it: "You're meant to use a condom before, not after."
Check out our report on the speech on page 4. We don't think you'll find anything too sensitive in it.
Our only explanation for the gag order is that Mr Han may have been worried about his speech, having been called upon at short notice to stand in for his boss, CBRC chairman Liu Mingkang, at the event organised by the Hong Kong Institute of Bankers. Our own monetary authority boss, Joseph Yam Chi-kwong, was also a no-show at the forum yesterday.
But it's a fair guess that those two gentlemen are preoccupied with extremely sensitive financial matters at the moment.