Chinese Billionaire Donates His Entire $1.2 Billion Fortune to Charity

Rags to riches is one way of living your life, working your way up from nothing to a successful position in life. Yet Chinese real estate mogul Yo Pengnian is going for something even better, he’s giving up his entire $1.2 billion fortune. The successful 88-year-old has no intentions of setting his kids up for the rest of their life with his money, as he revealed his intentions to give it all to charity in a recent press conference.

The money will be donated to a foundation that Yo established five years ago, it will help student scholarships, ongoing reconstruction efforts of the 2008 Sichuan earthquake and paying for operations for those who suffer from cataracts, like he does. His children will get nothing from the money, although I firmly doubt they’re wanting for much anyway after having an 88-year-old billionaire for a dad.

“Some of the money is for poor students, some is for talented students [who] I want to encourage, including foreign students who want to study in China. Education is very important for a country, very closely related to its prosperity and standard of living.” said Yu,. “This will be my last donation. I have nothing more to give away.” he added.

Mr Yu is one of the of the richest people in mainland China (although not for long), and has topped the country’s list of philanthropists for four years running and I have a funny feeling he’ll be #1 this year too after his latest announcement.

“They didn’t oppose the idea, at least not in public. 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.” said Yu when discussing concerns over how his children would take the news.

Is this technology news? Nope, but it is awesome that this man has worked his whole life just to give it all back to the world.

Thank you Networth for providing us with this information.

Images courtesy of Networth.