Taiwan’s Hon Hai Precision Industry, best known by its trade name Foxconn, is to change the way it conducts business on the mainland as it shifts its focus to the interior, said company chairman Terry Gou in an interview with the Wall Street Journal.

The company manufacturers a range of electronic products for global manufacturers, including Apple’s iPads, Nokia’s mobile phones and Hewlett Packard printers. It now plans to invest billions of dollars in central and western China because of rising wage costs in the more developed coastal regions.

Recently, the company has come under public scrutiny due to allegations of employee mistreatment and a spate of worker suicides. With questions being raised about the living and working conditions at its facilities, Hon Hai has decided to withdraw from the business of running dormitories and managing other social services for many of its workers. Instead, local governments will build and manage the housing for the staff working at new Hon Hai industrial parks located near cities such as Chengdu, Zhengzhou and Wuhan.

By separating these functions, Guo says the company “can focus on the main business: manufacturing, engineering, R&D, customer service”.