富豪的遗产是给子女还是做慈善?

The single largest concern and obsession of many rich is how to leave money to their children.

How much is too much? How can they be prepared? What is the ideal age to receive a trust fund?

Yu Pengnian, a Chinese real-estate tycoon, has some wise words for Americans pondering their children's windfall. Mr. Yu, who announced in April that he is giving away the last $500 million of his fortune to his charitable foundation (putting him over $1 billion of philanthropy), was asked whether his children are angry about the donations. His response:

'They didn't oppose this idea, at least not in public.' (It is a clever dodge. What rich child is going to announce: 'Forget charity. I need my yacht!')

Yet his Mr. Yu's greatest pearl of wisdom came when asked the question again by the Globe & Mail. Mr. Yu's response:

'If my children are competent, they don't need my money. If they're not, leaving them a lot of money is only doing them harm.'

Put another way, leaving your children tons of money is like telling them you don't think they can make it on their own. Too many wealthy parents focus on preventing their children from failing. But in doing so, they also deprive their children of the joys of self-made success.

The idea is all the more remarkable coming from a Chinese tycoon. In Asia, wealth is dynastic by nature. Businesses are created to be passed down through the generations. Wealth and privilege, in Confucian fashion, are truly all in the family.

Mr. Yu is a little eccentric-he wears white Mao suits and matching white shoes, with a bouffant hair-do dyed jet-black. Yet in his own way, the 88-year-old Mr. Yu is helping to shatter the traditions of inheritance. He says he is passionate about philanthropy because of his own poor upbringing, starting out as a street hawker in Hong Kong.

'Everybody has a different view of money,' he told the Globe & Mail. 'Some do good things with it, some rich people do nothing with it.…My goal is to be a leader, a pioneer who encourages rich people, inside and outside of China, to do something charitable.'

Do you think Mr. Yu is right about inheritance and competence?