Steve Bannon was greeted by protesters accusing him of being a racist and a Nazi as he arrived in Hong Kong Tuesday for his first public speech since leaving the White House.

The firebrand former aide was speaking at an event hosted by an arm of a Communist-party owned bank. His presentation was closed to the media.

CLSA, the Hong Kong-based brokerage that had invited Bannon to address its marquee 2017 investor conference, announced less than eight hours before the keynote address that it would be off-limits to reporters.

Journalists picking up their credentials on Tuesday at the Grand Hyatt were told they couldn't hear Bannon's speech, but weren't given any reasons.

CLSA is a unit of Citic Securities, a Chinese state-owned brokerage and investment bank. It's unclear if political pressure kept Bannon's speech from making a splash.

Not welcome: Steve Bannon faced these scenes outside the Hong Kong brokerage where he was speaking

Feel the burn: One protester burned pictures of Bannon as the controversial ex-Trump aide was due to speak.

Lightning rod: Bannon is one of the most controversial figures to emerge from Trump-world and is now an international focus for protestds

No detente: Protesters were waiting outside the Hong Kong venue where Bannon was speaking in secret to a Communist-regime-owned bank accused him of racism

Hard line: Bannon told CBS News on Sunday that 'China is, through forced technology transfer and through stealing our technology, but really forced technology transfer, is cutting out the beating heart of American innovation'

Investment firm CLSA, a unit of a a Chinese government-owned company, wouldn't explain why it decided to declare Bannon's speech off-limits to the press

At the media registration booth inside the CLSA 2017 investors forum in Hong Kong on September 12, 2017, a hand-written note instructed staffers to tell reporters that 'Steve Bannon's session is closed to the media'

Bannon's arrival in Hong Kong was accompanied by a protest organized by the communist Committee for a Workers' International and the League of Social Democrats.

Revolutionary Marxist League co-founder Leung Kwok-hung, a former Hong Kong legislator known to locals as 'Long Hair,' participated in the protest, which attracted a few dozen people.

'No Bannon, no racism,' chanted the group of about 15 demonstrators, who also held up a large black banner carrying the words, 'Nazis are not welcome here'.

One protester wearing a mask of Trump held up a placard depicting the U.S. president in the shape of a chicken, with the words, 'Toxic nationalist', on its belly.

It is the first explicit anti-Bannon protest known to have happened, and comes after he told Charlie Rose on 60 Minutes on Sunday that he did not care if the mainstream media called him those.

The organizers claimed the protests were not the reason for the speech being in secret.

Simone Wheeler, global head of communications at CLSA, told DailyMail.com that 'it's our event, we pay the speakers, and we decide these things.'

'It's our decision. It's a private event. We've decided to close it,' she said of Bannon's speech.

Three days ago CLSA boasted that it had snagged Bannon for his first post-White House speech, telling Bloomberg that '[h]e's the man of the moment, and we believe our clients are interested in what he has to say.'

'He is current and his opinion influences the markets.'

Wheeler said Tuesday that she couldn't comment on whether Bannon was paid to deliver remarks. But she confirmed that the decision to exclude journalists was made 'basically overnight.'

Wheeler said she was unaware of any threat of protesters or violence that may have played a role in closing what had been expected to be a blockbuster speech.

'There is no security threat that I'm aware of,' she said.

A Bannon spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The tony Grand Hyatt in Hong Kong is the site for this year's CLSA investor forum, and organizers were granting credentials to the press – but those media passes won't be honored for Bannon's address

Wheeler said that not all CLSA forum speeches are open to the press.

Of this year's 33 keynote speeches, those delivered in the Grand Hyatt's biggest ballroom to the largest audience, she said only 10 are open to reporters.

But closing a keynote speech to reporters, she added, is usually the result of media-shy speakers who ask for the press to be kept out.

In this case, CLSA made the decision.

CLSA communications specialist Tracy Hansen told DailyMail.com that Bannon would be 'speaking to the clients,' but 'not to the press.'

'It's been a bit on-again, off-again,' Hansen said on the margins of the annual event. 'It's a real shame. I'd really like to hear what he has to say.'

Bannon's speech had been expected to be a public spectacle calculated to provoke Beijing, full of ultimatums about economic warfare and leverage over an increasingly belligerent North Korea.

He told The New York Times last week that he planned to bring his forceful brand of America-firstism to the Far East, a talk focused on U.S. economic nationalism, the populist revolt that swept Trump to power, and how both phenomena impact Asia and its financial markets.

Previewing the speech in the pages of the Times put the event on the political map and threw a sharp spotlight on what Bannon would say.

Bannon last month told The American Prospect, a liberal magazine, that the U.S. is 'at economic war with China.' That observation was part of an exit interview timed to explain his rapid departure from the West Wing exactly one year after signing on as CEO of Trump's insurgent presidential campaign.

He suggested last week to the Times that his Hong Kong speech would be a rallying cry to westerners who have been napping while Beijing plots global hegemony.

'A hundred years from now, this is what they'll remember – what we did to confront China on its rise to world domination,' he said.

'China right now is Germany in 1930,' Bannon added. 'It's on the cusp. It could go one way or the other. The younger generation is so patriotic, almost ultranationalistic.'

'We have to reassert ourselves as the real Asian power: economically, militarily, culturally, politically,' he told the Times.

On Sunday's '60 Minutes,' Bannon bashed China for 'appropriating our technology' in a brief monologue that, for now, will stand as his most forceful public words on the subject.

'China is, through forced technology transfer and through stealing our technology, but really forced technology transfer, is cutting out the beating heart of American innovation,' he said.