Rich beyond his dreams but blind to value of money
- By Huang Xiangyang
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E-mail China Daily, June 1, 2015
First, in the West, a rich father does not necessarily guarantee wealth for the children. Many of the wealthy people there see their offspring as independent human beings who need to stand on their own. They actually fear that wealth could be a hurdle on their children's path to personal fulfillment and self-discovery. That is why Bill Gates has pledged to give all his $58 billion fortune to charity rather than leaving it for his children. And then there is Warren Buffett, who promised to give away 85 percent of his fortune to help the poor.
Second, in the West, many wealthy people are strict with their children and teach them values rather than give them everything they want. "My son, life is like a great campaign. To win, you must work harder, harder and harder," is what John D. Rockefeller, founder of the Standard Oil Co and one of the world's wealthiest men early in the 20th century, told his son in a letter.
I hope words like that ring a bell with Wang Jianlin.
Third, in the West, a person becomes a legal adult at 18, at which point he is responsible for his words and actions. A father would be ridiculed if he said that his 27-year-old son was too young to be accountable for his faults and failures.
At 20, Mark Zuckerberg had already launched Facebook from his Harvard dormitory room, and at 27, Gates had registered Microsoft in New Mexico.
Nobody expects Wang Sicong to change the world the way those young Americans did. But is it too much to expect that he acts like a normal human being?
It seems that Wang Jianlin knows what his son is made of, as he has ruled out letting the young man take over from him at Dalian Wanda. Yet still he has allowed his son to try his hand in business.
A fund run by Wang Sicong was joined by Wanda Investment Co recently in investing in LeTV Sports Culture Develop (Beijing)'s latest funding round, which raised more than $100 million.
I think Wang Sicong wants people to see him as a real businessman like his father, instead of a social media clown. It would only benefit his family's reputation and his own business if the young man could exercise a little more restraint with his acts and words. And that's no joke.
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