2014–2016: The “China Surge” — Alibaba and Tencent rose rapidly on e‑commerce and mobile internet growth.

2017–2019: Social platform wars — Meta and Tencent both thrived as global attention shifted to social ecosystems.

2020–2021: Cloud explosion — Amazon’s AWS dominance pushed it past $1.6T, while Meta neared $1T.

2022–2023: Diverging paths — U.S. tech rebounded with AI pivots, while Chinese firms faced regulatory headwinds.

2024–2025: AI & scale — Amazon (Amazon market cap $2.3T) and Meta (Meta market cap $1.9T) surged, cementing U.S. dominance; Tencent (Tencent market cap $757B) and Alibaba (Alibaba market cap $392B) remain strong but no longer in the same league.