We learn in “Steve Jobs” by Walter Isaacson that the college-age son of the most iconic American businessman of his era wants to be a cancer researcher. There is no mention he wants to follow dad into the business he co-founded, Apple, or anything like it. It turns out that a lot of kids of Chinese entrepreneurs may have the same idea
According to a survey of 182 family companies by Shanghai Jiao Tung University, 82% of heirs don’t want to take over the family business, says a report this weekend by the state-owned Xinhua News Agency. The average age of entrepreneurs surveyed was 52 – not far from Jobs’s own age of 56 when he died from cancer last October– and many of their businesses will undergo a power shift in the next 10 years, Xinhua said.
Although state-controlled companies such as PetroChina and China Mobile play a key role in China’s economy, the future of private-sector companies is also important because of their own role in job and wealth creation in the country. China had 95 billionaires on this month’s 2012 Forbes Billionaires List, third in the world after the U.S. and Russia. Robin Li, the chairman of Internet search engine Baidu, ranked No. 1 with wealth of $10.2 billion.
Jobs’s widow, Laurene Powell Jobs, ranked No. 100 and shares her fortune worth $9 billion with Jobs’s family.
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