When the Wall Street Journal finagled a on-site visit to Foxconn, many wondered why its media-shy founder, Terry Gou, was letting down his guard, even slightly, after years of refusing to let the press light in.

This may be why. Forbes and others are reporting Gou, a billionaire at least five times over, is taking a $100 million stake in Alibaba, a Chinese e-commerce startup that may someday wish to compete with Google, Yahoo and other Internet titans. (Yahoo may be hedging its bets: the company has also invested $100 million.)

In remarks to a conference and later in his blog (you read that right), Gou predicted Asia’s e-commerce development will catch up with the West. His speech and a slideshow are among the (to date) four posts on his blog; I’d suggest taking a look.