But that was not enough to dissuade him from taking such an interventionist step on that occasion - nor is it likely to stop he or his colleagues from doing so whenever a similar situation arises in future.

So it would be wrong to regard his equally outspoken opposition to last week's calls for measures to help those owning flats worth less than their outstanding mortgages as the Government's last word on the subject.

After all, Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa has gone out of his way to express sympathy in previous policy addresses for 'the heavy financial burden on those citizens whose properties have become negative assets'. And now that he is running for a second term in next year's Chief Executive election it has clearly become his aim to revive the property market as quickly as possible.

Any doubts on that score have been dispelled by his administration taking two steps in this direction within just four days - not only limiting land sales to just five hectares but also relaxing many of the remaining anti-speculation measures.

Mr Tung might only be facing an 800-strong electorate in the next 2002 contest. But this small-circle Election Committee includes representatives of virtually all the major property companies, who all have a vested interest in seeing property prices rise again.

In any case, as was shown in the 1996 contest for Mr Tung's first term, public opinion still has to be taken into account. And there is little that would be more politically popular among Hong Kong's huge number of home owners than a revival in the value of their assets.

Perhaps the only reason the Government could afford to speak out so strongly against last week's calls to help those with negative equity is the clumsy way they were put forward by the Democratic Party and other proponents. By advocating special treatment for this group of homeowners, public opinion - as reflected in a number of hostile newspaper editorials - was alienated.

But, for all Mr Tsang's protestations, the general direction of government policy towards stimulating the property market remains clear. In any case, he will soon be gone from the post of Financial Secretary to be replaced by the more interventionist Antony Leung Kam-chung.

Even before that, it is difficult to see how Mr Tsang's final Budget on March 7 can fail to include yet more measures to further Mr Tung's goal of creating enough of a feel-good factor among homeowners to ensure his re-election as Chief Executive.

After all, the lesson of recent years is that whenever the Government publicly protests it will not intervene in a particular way in the property market, it is usually a prelude to doing precisely this.

Danny Gittings is the Post's Editorial Pages Editor