Gou envisions a fully-automated (and presumably almost employee-free) component factory inside of five years, has qualms about expanding his manufacturing presence in America ("I don't want to spend time having people sue me every day"), and pays executive bonuses out of his own dividends to protect the company's bottom line... so yeah, he's quite the industrialist.

ENGADGET: BusinessWeek profiles Foxconn founder (and veritable pitbull) Terry Gou

And as a student he had worked during the holidays in various factories belonging to the Fiat group: on a car-production line in Poland, in a dealership in France and in a component factory in the English Midlands, where he boarded with a very ordinary English family.

ECONOMIST: Face value