China ? China’s media, quick to report when a shoe was thrown at former President George W. Bush last year, sidestepped any direct mention or images today of a protester hurling his shoe at the Chinese premier during a speech in Britain.

Unlike the now-famous incident when an Iraqi reporter threw his shoes at Bush in December, covered widely not only in China but around the world, state-run newspapers and Web sites in China carried stories on Wen’s speech but had no reference to the shoe-throwing. Content mentioning it on Internet forums also appears to have been deleted.

The official Xinhua News Agency issued a story saying that Britain apologized for an incident and that China had “expressed its strong feelings against the occurrence of the incident.” However, it did not say what the incident was.

In the live broadcast of the speech on state-run CCTV’s Web site, the camera remains fixed on Wen, not showing the shoe or the protester, although his remarks and the sound of the shoe hitting the stage can be heard.