The great rural walls of China

Five years ago, when Hu Wei, 40, founded Cuncunle.com, an online-to-offline creative services startup, he never imagined e-commerce giants such as Alibaba Group Holding Ltd and JD.com would one day make a beeline for him. But, as China's Internet majors scramble to expand their presence in the country's vast rural areas, firms with village connections like Cuncunle.com are in great demand.

"We help companies do marketing in the countryside by leveraging our 10 million rural users," Hu said.

Last year, the company painted over 7 million square meters of village walls with advertisements. "For JD alone, we painted over 10,000 walls."