最近，郭台铭(Terry Gou)加入了一群跳霹雳舞的富士康科技集团(Foxconn Technology Group)年轻工人，并且显然乐在其中。他手创的富士康科技集团是全球最大的电子产品合同制造商。当时，他正在位于中国南部城市深圳的富士康最大厂区举办一场派对，努力为自己的制造业帝国营造人性的一面。不过，郭台铭并不仅仅是去跳舞，容光焕发的他接下来宣布，计划在工厂配备100万台新机器人，其中一些会"代替"工人。这令在场的人感到震惊。
这一令人吃惊的数字，加上在本意是鼓舞员工士气的派对上宣布自动化计划的怪异做法，是这位魅力超凡、难以捉摸的台湾企业家的典型风格，贯穿于他过去37年来谋求公司扩张的整个过程。但对郭台铭而言，这一举动也带有个人色彩：他的亚洲版白手起家的传奇，能否在缔造出一个真正的世界级企业的过程中达到高潮，将取决于此。
富士康控制着全球外包科技产品的将近一半市场，从iPad、游戏机到个人电脑。但郭台铭最近承认，该公司在获取更大的市场份额上面临着新的挑战，并将年收入增长预期下调了50%。
对于现年60岁、自信满满的郭台铭来说，增长放缓并不是一件可以安之若素的事情。在整个创业生涯中，他像统治一个帝国那样治理自己的企业，很少征求他人意见，而是依赖自己的强大说服力。在股东会议上，他是出了名地喜欢站在讲台上给投资者上课，用一种统治者的姿态，轻轻松松地打消对挑战的顾虑。
在行业内，他因一件事而出名：他曾提出送一位戴尔(Dell)的高管去机场，随后"诱骗"他参观工厂――好让这位潜在客户信服他出众的制造技术。现在，郭台铭希望凭借新机器人提升技术。"我们是高科技制造企业，而非传统的合同制造商，"他这样评价自己这家去年收入800亿美元的公司。
传递这一愿景绝非易事，尤其是在工资不断上涨、劳动力供给日益减少正推高中国制造成本的形势下――富士康的大部分厂房设在中国大陆。况且，这是在郭台铭的公司因一系列悲剧事件而引起全世界关注之后。去年，11名富士康工人在深圳的厂区跳楼自杀。
起初，郭台铭只是把自杀当作偶然事件而未予重视――实际上，以该公司的100万员工衡量，这样的自杀率低于全国平均值。但是，工时超长、薪水微薄的中国工人，为了生产供富裕消费者使用的iPod而拼命干活，这样一幅图景触动了全世界公众的心弦――富士康发现自己面临着一场巨大的公关危机。"我认为这是郭台铭第一次开始认真地把工人当作人来看待，"曾在富士康工作过的青桐这样说道。她写过一本关于自己民工生活的书。
过去30年里，郭台铭面对新挑战一直表现出灵活性和适应力――既然最终开始严肃地看待这一问题，他的反应也很坚决。每一幢高层宿舍楼都装上了亮黄色的网，用来接住坠楼者，公司还聘请了心理医生和其他专家小组对自杀进行分析。对这位富士康掌门人来说，这丝毫不亚于打一场与他自己休戚相关的防御战，以捍卫他花费毕生精力所缔造的企业。
郭台铭生于1950年，是一对山西夫妇的长子。父母在他出生前一年、中共在内战中获胜后逃到台湾。郭台铭有两个弟弟，父亲是警察，家里没什么钱。因此，读完高中后，郭台铭上了3年职业学校，做了很短时间的办公室职员，就在1974年开始在自己的车库创业，做电视机的塑料旋钮――用他岳母给的7500美元作为启动资金。
公司发展迅猛，但直到6年之后，在花费了长达一年时间走遍美国32个州、游说美国科技公司为他提供新订单之后，郭台铭才取得了重大突破。他不提前约定而直接造访，尽管英语很差，还是成功地说服IBM等公司将零部件制造外包给他的企业。
面对日益上升的劳动力成本，1988年郭台铭成为首批在中国大陆设立工厂的台湾企业家之一。他不顾作为台湾企业家所面临的政治风险和有欠透明的法律体系，签订了一系列协议，从不同地方政府那里拿到了廉价的工厂用地和低税率待遇。
"他是一个自力更生的人，这一点表现得十分明显，"同为台湾企业的竞争对手仁宝电脑(Compal)总裁兼首席执行官陈瑞聪(Ray Chen)说。虽然身为台湾首富之一，但在深圳厂区时，郭台铭一直在一个条件简朴的办公室工作。他甚至在那里睡觉，房间里是旧地毯，床上挂着一顶老式的绿色塑料蚊帐。其他上市公司招待大股东住五星级酒店，而郭台铭的年度股东大会却是在公司总部召开。它位于台北郊区一个名叫土城的地方，会议室就像一座校园礼堂。
不过，这种朴素风格与他最近表现出的生活享乐有着明显的反差，尤其是上周在工厂里的热情舞蹈。第一任妻子林淑如(Serena Lin)2005年死于癌症之后，这位鳏夫开始染烫自己的灰色头发，之后表现出了对美女的兴趣：他向香港电影明星刘嘉玲(Carina Lau)和台湾最著名的模特林志玲(Lin Chi-ling)大献殷勤，还在一次公司活动中与林志玲跳了一曲惊人的探戈。2008年，他迎娶了曾馨莹(Delia Tseng)，一位小他20多岁的舞蹈演员。
郭台铭近来的奇异品味也给他以往一贯低调的企业带来了变化。"我们是一个工程师的行业，所以郭台铭真是一个非同寻常的人物，尤其是他最近表现出来的行事风格，"另一家大型合同制造商广达电脑(Quanta Computer)的一位高管表示。有人认为，这一变化预示着郭台铭有可能退休，特别是他几年前曾首次谈到要培养接班人。
但迄今为止，事情根本与此无关。郭台铭有着运动员一样的体形，在他的年龄来说身材相当健美，他上周对他的工人说："人生最重要的是从挫折中学习！"去年的自杀危机，让人们再次看到郭台铭对公司的掌控――现在，下台是他最不可能考虑的事情。虽然他设想了一个由机器人驱动的未来，但一些分析人士警告称，富士康的高效、劳动力密集生产模式不可能为了一个新时代而彻底改变。看起来郭台铭急于想要证明他们是错误的。
本文作者是英国《金融时报》驻北京记者
译者/方舟
http://www.ftchinese.com/story/001040049
Terry Gou clearly enjoyed himself last week, when joining a crowd of break-dancing young workers who man the factory lines at Foxconn Technology Group, the company he built into the world's largest contract electronics manufacturer. He was throwing a party at the company's largest factory complex, in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen, as part of efforts to give his manufacturing colossus a human face. Rather than leaving it at just dancing, however, a radiant Mr Gou went on to announce plans to equip his factories with as many as 1m new robots, some of which would "replace" human beings. His audience was shocked.
The stunning numbers, combined with the bizarre tactic of announcing automation plans in a workers' pep talk, were typical of this charismatic and unpredictable Taiwanese entrepreneur, as he looks to enlarge the company he has built over the past 37 years. But for Mr Gou the move is personal too: it will decide whether his own Asian rags-to-riches story culminates in the creation of a truly world-class company.
Foxconn controls close to half of the world's market for outsourced technology products, from iPads and game consoles to personal computers. But Mr Gou has recently admitted that his organisation faces new challenges grabbing further market share, halving his forecast for annual revenue growth.
Slowing down is not something that comes naturally to this confident 60-year-old. Throughout his career he has ruled his business like an empire, rarely consulting others, relying instead on his own considerable powers of persuasion. At shareholder meetings he is known to enjoy lecturing investors from the podium, breezily dismissing challenges with an authoritarian air.
In his industry he became famous for once offering a Dell executive a lift to the airport, before "abducting" him for a factory visit � to convince this potential customer of his superior manufacturing techniques. Now, armed with his new robots, Mr Gou wants to move up the technology ladder. "We are a high-tech manufacturer, not a traditional contract manufacturer," he says of a company that made $80bn in revenues last year.
Delivering this vision will be far from easy, especially given that rising wages and a dwindling supply of workers are pushing up costs in China, where most of Foxconn's factories are based. But it also comes after an event that introduced Mr Gou's company to the world in tragic circumstances, when 11 Foxconn workers last year took their own lives, by jumping from buildings in the Shenzhen plant.
Initially Mr Gou dismissed the suicides as statistically insignificant � and indeed, measured against the company's 1m headcount, the numbers were below the national average. But the image of overworked and poorly paid Chinese factory employees slaving over iPods destined for wealthy consumers struck a chord around the world � and the company found itself facing a huge public relations crisis. "I believe it was the first time Terry Gou started seriously thinking about the workers as human beings," says Qing Tong, a former Foxconn employee who has written a book about her life as a migrant worker.
Over the past three decades Mr Gou has built a record of flexibility and adaptation to new challenges � and having finally taken the problem seriously, he responded firmly. Bright yellow nets were installed around each high-rise dorm building, to catch anyone falling off, while panels of psychologists and other experts were drafted in to explain the suicides. For the Foxconn chief it was nothing less than a highly personal defence of the business he had spent a lifetime building.
Born in 1950, Mr Gou was the first son of a couple from the Chinese province of Shanxi, who had fled to Taiwan only a year previously, after the communist victory in China's civil war. With two younger brothers, and a father working as a policeman, the family had little money. So after high school, three years in a vocational school and a short stint as an office clerk, in 1974 Mr Gou started his own garage business making plastic knobs for television sets � using $7,500 from his mother-in-law as start-up capital.
The company grew strongly, but only six years later Mr Gou got his big break after a year-long tour of 32 US states to lobby American technology companies for new orders. With unannounced visits, and despite his poor English, he managed to convince IBM and others to outsource elements of their business.
Facing growing labour costs, Mr Gou in 1988 became one of the first Taiwanese entrepreneurs to set up shop in China. Ignoring warnings about both the political risks facing a Taiwanese entrepreneur and an opaque legal system, he went on to sign a range of deals, winning cheap land for factories, and low taxes, from various local governments.
"He is a self-made man, and that really shows," says Ray Chen, president and chief executive of Compal, a Taiwanese rival. Despite being one of Taiwan's richest men, Mr Gou continues to work from a spartan office when he is at the Shenzhen campus. He even sleeps there, in a room with worn carpet and a bed with an old-fashioned green plastic mosquito net. While other listed companies treat their main shareholders to five-star hotels, Mr Gou's annual general meeting is held at its headquarters in a Taipei suburb, called Tucheng, or Dirt City, in a room that feels like a school assembly hall.
This austere style contrasts, however, with a recently discovered personal joie de vivre, which flashed through during last week's factory dancing. After Serena Lin, his first wife, died of cancer in 2005, the widower started to dye and perm his grey hair. A taste for beautiful women also followed: he courted Carina Lau, the Hong Kong film star, and Lin Chi-ling, Taiwan's most famous model, with whom he delivered a stunning tango performance at one company event. In 2008, he married Delia Tseng, a dancer more than 20 years his junior.
Mr Gou's newly exotic tastes have brought changes to a previously low-key business too. "We are an industry of engineers, so Terry, especially with this new style, is a really unusual character," says an executive at Quanta Computer, another large contract manufacturer. Some see the change as a sign of Mr Gou's looming retirement, especially since he first talked of grooming a successor a few years ago.
As yet, nothing has come of that. Athletically built and remarkably fit for his age, he told his workers last week: "The most important thing in life is to learn from setbacks!" Last year's suicide crisis saw Mr Gou again take control of his company � and now nothing appears further from his mind than stepping down. Despite his vision of a robot-powered future, some analysts warn that Foxconn's model of efficient, labour-intensive production cannot be reinvented for a new era. Mr Gou seems eager to prove them wrong.
The writer is an FT Beijing correspondent
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