China is wrestling with a novel phenomenon: inherited wealth

中国的代际财富转移

Economist

2026-03-13

21 分钟
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  • Chen Kai likens his work to promoting the use of condoms.

  • People are starting to hear cautionary tales about what can go wrong

  • and so are becoming interested in protecting themselves, he says.

  • But there are cultural obstacles:

  • writing a will, or indeed having much wealth to pass on in the first place,

  • are novel concepts in modern China.

  • Private enterprise and private wealth—eradicated in the early decades of Communist rule—

  • have been possible again only for the past 40 years or so.

  • The first generation to get rich after China embarked on market reforms is beginning to die,

  • which is why Mr Chen's state-backed charity, the China Will Registration Centre,

  • is helping the elderly write and file wills.

  • Yet even Mr Chen is somewhat conflicted about China's first big inter-generational transfer.

  • A small sliver of society will soon be inheriting vast wealth

  • just as a prolonged economic slowdown is shrinking the economic prospects of the young.

  • That unearned income should be taxed, argues Mr Chen:

  • "It's absurd for a socialist country not to introduce an inheritance tax."

  • It was only in the late 1970s that Deng Xiaoping, then China's paramount leader,

  • opened the economy and "let some people get rich first"

  • as a step towards "common prosperity".

  • Over that time a lot of people have become rich.