When it comes to being first with mainland news, local hacks can't hold a candle to Xinhua. The China News Service was the first agency to break the news that China and the US had concluded their bilateral WTO market access agreement. But the signing time it mentioned was much earlier than the official ceremony.
'The United States and China signed an agreement on Beijing's entry into the World Trade Organisation on Monday, at the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Co-operation at 1.30pm after six days of tense, difficult negotiations', it said in a 1.40pm report. 'China's WTO entry bid has taken a crucial step,' the news brief added.
But a spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Co-operation denied the report immediately, and said talks with the US on entry into the WTO were still under way on Monday afternoon.
'We don't know where the China News Service report came from,' the spokesman said.
Many local and foreign journalists waiting desperately outside the building thought they had missed the signing ceremony. It actually took place after 3.30pm, when, as the world now knows, US Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky and senior White House aide Gene Sperling attended for the US and Foreign Trade Minister Shi Guangsheng and chief WTO negotiator Long Yongtu did the honours for China.
Discussions went off at something of a tangent when the Frontier party met Financial Secretary Donald Tsang Yam-kuen to talk about the Disney project earlier this week. Frontier members think the whole deal has been arrived at far too quickly, and they took that as a starting point to tell the bow-tied one that they didn't approve of any of the other hasty undercover decisions taken by the administration in recent months.
The group obviously touched a sore spot by mentioning the stock market intervention as an example of their concerns. Mr Tsang is rather proud of the way that little panic measure turned out, and he's equally testy about the Cyper-Port giveaway. So he rounded on his critics and told them he had a far better feel for what the public needed than they had.