Hon Hai Precision Industry Co founder Terry Gou (郭台銘) has had a lot to say about Pfizer-BioNTech’s next-generation COVID-19 vaccine. On Wednesday last week, he posted a comment on Facebook in which he criticized government leaders and officials by quoting from The Romance of the Three Kingdoms (三國演義).
“The household officers were corrupt and foolish, and the court officials were as brute beasts, living only that they might feed,” he wrote.
Why did Gou choose this moment to rehash the stale issue of COVID-19 vaccines?
The most widely known recent incident concerning Hon Hai — and one that has given rise to doubts and suspicions — has nothing to do with vaccines. Rather, it is the U-turn by Hon Hai’s China-listed subsidiary Foxconn Industrial Internet Co, which, within less than half a year, first bought an indirect minority stake in China’s Tsinghua Unigroup Co and then announced that it would resell the stake.
Hon Hai in July announced that it would spend more than NT$20 billion (US$651.1 million) to buy Tsinghua Unigroup shares, a firm that has long since lost its lead in core technologies and a lot of its former prestige.
People wondered whether Hon Hai wanted to help China’s semiconductor industry in the face of a US technology blockade.
However, Hon Hai’s reversal has given rise to rumors in China that it is planning to pull out of the country.
Hon Hai’s activity would surely not win it any friends on either side of the Taiwan Strait. China, especially, will not look kindly upon it after seeing the investment slip through its fingers.
With all of this going on, why did Gou lash out at President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) government? One can but wonder what his real motive might be.
Huang Wei-ping is a former think tank researcher.
Translated by Julian Clegg
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