With respect to Hong Kong Computer Society president Daniel Lai, it is ludicrous to ask the government to mandate e-learning as a way to 'create a new industry with vast economic potential for Hong Kong'.
It will not work.
Private capital tends to find its way to the places where it can best multiply. Capital does this every day all over the world without needing a whole lot of direction from government or industry committees. On the other hand, government programmes to identify and nurture market winners almost always fail.
The likely scenario in terms of Chinese language e-learning content is that Hong Kong, one way or another, will become a net importer. It is far cheaper to source the kinds of labour-intensive projects that go into e-learning content creation - writing, translating, designing graphics, storyboarding and so on - from a low-wage nation with millions of well-trained, eager knowledge workers than it is to try to create such a nexus in a place with no obvious competitive advantage.
Government effort and money would be much better spent on projects to meet goals that private capital cannot easily achieve: dramatic pollution reduction, legislative changes to allow for the creation of more diversified neighbourhoods, or improvements in the quality of primary education, for example.
These kinds of change would create powerful, long-term growth engines in Hong Kong.