Terry Gou: Banqiao 1950, Hon Hai Plastics 1974, and the Founder of a Contract-Manufacturing Empire

30-second overview: Terry Gou was born on October 18, 1950, in Banqiao, Taipei County.¹ In 1974, using NT$100,000 raised by his mother through a rotating credit association, he founded “Hon Hai Plastics Enterprise,” with 10 employees, mainly producing television knobs.² In 1981, the company developed PC connectors; in 1982, it was renamed “Hon Hai Precision Industry.”² In June 2019, Gou handed the chairmanship to Young Liu, and that same year entered and then withdrew from the Kuomintang presidential primary.³ In 2021, the Yonglin Foundation worked with TSMC and Hon Hai, with each party donating 5 million BNT vaccine doses to help Taiwan fight the pandemic.⁴ In 2023, he again sought the presidency through an independent petition drive, with Tammy Lai as his running mate; the petition reached 902,389 people, the second-highest total in Taiwan’s history, before he announced his withdrawal three hours before registration.⁵ In 2024, Hon Hai reported consolidated revenue of NT$6.8596 trillion and ranked No. 32 on the Fortune 500.⁶ In March 2026, Gou’s net worth was about US$15.3 billion, making him Taiwan’s richest person once again.⁷

A Military Dependent’s Child from Banqiao

Terry Gou was born on October 18, 1950, in Banqiao, Taipei County, now Banqiao District, New Taipei City. His father was a mainlander soldier, and the family was poor.¹ After graduating from China Maritime College, now National Taiwan Ocean University, he worked briefly in the shipping industry before turning to entrepreneurship.

His Mother’s Rotating Credit Association: NT$100,000, 10 People, Television Knobs

In 1974, Gou borrowed NT$100,000 that his mother had obtained through a rotating credit association, known in Taiwan as a biaohui, and founded “Hon Hai Plastics Enterprise Co., Ltd.” The company had only 10 employees and mainly produced plastic parts such as television knobs.²

The Hon Hai Plastics of NT$100,000 and 10 people, and the Hon Hai of 2024 with NT$6.8596 trillion in revenue and a No. 32 Fortune 500 ranking, are separated by a numerical span that runs across a full 50 years. Gou’s career is a complete cross-section of Taiwan’s manufacturing sector as it moved from component contract manufacturing to the core of the global electronics supply chain. He is not a single case in Taiwan’s electronics industry, but a condensation of an entire industrial era.

From Knobs to PC Connectors: The Choice of Precision Manufacturing

In 1981, Hon Hai entered the production of personal-computer connectors, riding the rapid growth of the PC industry.² In 1982, the company was renamed “Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., Ltd.,” with capital of NT$16 million, establishing precision manufacturing as its core position.²

Connectors are among the most basic yet indispensable components in the PC industry: motherboards, power supplies, graphics cards, and external peripherals all require connectors for assembly. Gou’s move from knobs to connectors was a strategic decision. He chose an industrial position that would “absolutely never be eliminated.” Hon Hai later expanded from connectors into assembly contracting, casings, and molds, and each step was built as an extension of this “core positioning in precision manufacturing.”

Shenzhen’s Million-Person Factory

In the 1990s, Gou established a production base in Shenzhen, combining mainland China’s low-cost advantages with Hon Hai’s precision-manufacturing technology, and the company’s scale expanded rapidly. After the iPhone was introduced in 2007, Hon Hai became Apple’s major contract-manufacturing partner. At its peak, it employed more than one million workers, and the media described it as a “contract-manufacturing empire.”

The contract-manufacturing relationship between Apple and Hon Hai is one of the most important bilateral relationships in the global consumer-electronics supply chain. Hon Hai assembles most iPhones, and that position gives Taiwan an irreplaceable role in Apple’s supply-chain strategy. Even as Apple has actively diversified risk, Hon Hai remains a core link.

Handing the Reins to Young Liu, and First Entering Politics

In June 2019, Gou handed the chairmanship of Hon Hai to Young Liu and shifted his own title to group founder.³ That same year, Gou announced a run in the 2020 Republic of China presidential election, advocating governance through an entrepreneur’s mindset and emphasizing the stabilization of cross-strait relations.

In the Kuomintang presidential primary polling in July 2019, Kaohsiung mayor Han Kuo-yu defeated Gou, 44.8% to 27.7%.³ On September 12, Gou announced that he was leaving the party. Late at night on September 16, in his capacity as founder of the Hon Hai Group, he issued a statement deciding that he would “not take part in the 2020 petition campaign for president.”³ The key to this withdrawal was coordination and communication by Kuomintang vice chair Hau Lung-bin and others: Gou ultimately chose not to split the pan-blue vote.

The exit from his first presidential attempt shaped the very different path he chose when he tried again in 2024: an independent petition drive that bypassed party mechanisms.

Fifteen Million BNT Doses: Business Capacity Supplementing Government Speed

In May 2021, as Taiwan’s COVID-19 outbreak intensified and the government encountered difficulties in vaccine procurement, Gou, in his personal capacity, launched the Yonglin Foundation’s BNT vaccine procurement plan.⁴ He made a public appeal on May 23; on June 1, the foundation filed documents with the Food and Drug Administration; on June 18, the Executive Yuan formally authorized the plan. The whole process took exactly seven weeks.

In the end, TSMC, Hon Hai, and the Yonglin Charity Foundation each purchased 5 million BNT vaccine doses, for a total of 15 million doses. They were procured directly from the original manufacturer, manufactured and labeled by the original manufacturer, shipped directly to Taiwan, and donated to the Centers for Disease Control under the Ministry of Health and Welfare.⁴ This was the largest private vaccine donation in Taiwan’s pandemic-response history, and it turned the idea of “entrepreneurs using commercial capacity to supplement the speed of government procurement” into a widely discussed model for public issues.

For Gou personally, the action’s significance went beyond business. He used his personal prestige, along with his communication capacity with Beijing, to unlock the most politically sensitive node in the BNT vaccine procurement process at the time, providing substantive help at a critical moment in Taiwan’s public-health response.

From 900,000 Petition Signatures to Withdrawal Three Hours Before Registration

On August 28, 2023, Gou held a press conference for the “Mainstream Public Opinion Alliance” and announced that he would run as an independent candidate in the 2024 presidential election.⁵ On September 14, he announced that his running mate would be spiritual writer and entertainer Tammy Lai. Lai rapidly renounced her U.S. citizenship to meet eligibility requirements.

The petition process was highly unusual in Taiwan’s political history. From its launch on September 20 to the deadline on November 1, Gou’s team collected 902,389 valid petition signatures, the second-highest number of signatures in the history of Taiwan’s public-office elections.⁵ The number itself was a sample of public opinion, showing that amid the political atmosphere of the 2024 election, a large number of voters still hoped for a third path.

But three hours before the candidate-registration deadline, Gou announced his withdrawal. The statement was titled “Choosing to Enable Others Is Already All the Love I Can Give to My Homeland.”⁵ He called for “the completion of party rotation,” directing his supporters toward other candidates.

Two campaigns, both ending in withdrawal at the final stage: Gou’s trajectory of political participation presents a distinctive tension. Each time he entered the field, and each time he stepped back just before the final step. This pattern is unique in Taiwan’s political history. With each entry, he accumulated a sample of public opinion; with each exit, he avoided a possible splitting effect.

US$15.3 Billion, and Repeated Turns

Gou has resigned from his position as a Hon Hai director, citing “personal reasons.”⁷ In March 2026, his net worth was about US$15.3 billion, making him Taiwan’s richest person once again.⁷

From Hon Hai Plastics, a NT$100,000 knob factory, to a contract-manufacturing empire ranked No. 32 on the Fortune 500; from a Kuomintang primary contender in 2019, to a promoter of BNT vaccines in 2021, to an independent candidate who “chose to enable others” in 2023, Gou’s professional and public life traces an expanding arc from manufacturing to capital to public participation.

Common phrasing → more precise reading: Gou is often positioned as an entrepreneur who “ran for president twice but did not finish either campaign.” The more precise reading is this: he is one of the few Taiwanese entrepreneurs able to cross four domains: business, manufacturing, public-health response, and electoral mobilization. The figure of 902,389 petition signatures and the figure of 15 million BNT doses are both real marks in Taiwan’s public memory. They are not material for a heroic narrative, but concrete records of an entrepreneur intervening in the public sphere with personal resources and prestige.

Curator’s note: Gou’s political participation differs from the usual pattern of entrepreneurs “donating money to candidates”: he personally entered the field and personally subjected himself to public scrutiny. That choice itself is an exceptional case in Taiwan’s political-business relations. He is one of the very few Formosa Plastics-level entrepreneurs willing to expose himself to direct public evaluation.

In the 2021 BNT vaccine donation, at a moment when Taiwanese society was most sensitive to controversy over vaccine procurement, he used the power of his personal brand to advance a national-level public-health node. The success of that intervention gave his “entrepreneurial governance” appeal, when he ran again in 2023, a concrete and verifiable precedent.

The 2023 withdrawal under the banner of “choosing to enable others” was a rare case in Taiwan’s electoral history: a candidate voluntarily giving up a competitive qualification that had already been established. Nine hundred thousand petition signatures were no small matter, yet he chose not to activate them. The manner of this exit is even more worth recording than the high-profile entry.

From Shenzhen factories, Apple contract manufacturing, and Yonglin Foundation vaccines to the “Mainstream Public Opinion Alliance” press conference, Gou’s trajectory is an overlapping cross-section of Taiwan’s manufacturing era and post-manufacturing era. He is not only an entrepreneur. He is a personalized representative of the globalization of Taiwan’s electronics industry, and a full case study for this generation’s question of how entrepreneurs participate in the public sphere.

Further reading: Terry Gou — Wikipedia | Hon Hai Group: Founder Profile

References