Connect the past, present and the future

The first time Jack Ma, founder of China's e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd, used the Internet was in 1995 in the United States. His search for "beer" and "China" turned up no results. It was then that Ma decided to set up an online platform, one that could make it easy for people to do business anywhere.

Cut to the present, and there has been a sea change in the virtual world. Shoppers can buy almost everything in Ma's online e-commerce empire, which since its initial public offering in September 2014 has vaulted into the same league as Google Inc and Facebook Inc.

But changing the way people shop is not the only thing that the Internet has changed China. In many ways 2014, which was also the 20th anniversary of China getting connected to the Internet, was an excellent year of returns for China's Internet sector, no matter how big or small the company was.