The American television show CSI (Crime Scene Investigation) has got to be one of the most successful franchises of all times with the original Las Vegas-based one giving rise to spin-offs in New York and Miami, all three having run for multiple seasons.
The formula is basically the same: bodies are found, painstaking detective work follows, perpetrators are identified. A link is sometimes found between what were initially thought to be unrelated crimes.
Producer Jerry Bruckheimer has many other successful shows under his belt. I thought of him when considering two major economic crimes in Hong Kong: the first is the disappearance of more than 4,300 places in international schools, and the second is the loss of our air quality objectives.
Let us set the scene for each.
Every international chamber of commerce in Hong Kong reports that the shortage of places in international schools is now a serious barrier to foreign companies investing in our city and creating in the process thousands of jobs for local people. The senior executives who would head the operations decline to move to Hong Kong until they can be assured that they can bring their families with them.
They soon find that landing a place for their children is incredibly difficult. Every good international school has a waiting list a mile long. The horror stories are endless: Macau schools advertising here so that either the children or the working parents have to engage in a daily or weekly commute; families basing themselves in Singapore with the main breadwinner working in Hong Kong and returning 'home' only at weekends.
Some companies have even been forced to reconsider their entire business strategy and locate vital business units in other locations.
