First of all, I live in China (Beijing). Alibaba is mostly a C2C (or at most C2B) platform and is the method offered to foreign countries. It started as a way, similar to eBay, to sell your 'Buy now' products (called Taobao), however it easily enabled small 'business' to establish; individuals started to resell products and act as agents for the factories.
It is much harder to deal with the factory yourself. First of all, the quantities you have to buy are MUCH higer before they even wanna deal with you. Chinese agents mostly can get small quantities. Also, there is a language barrier. English language level is not really high, especially in the area where manufacturing happens. it is really YMMV... they often are not much better than the agents.. From what you tell here, it seems you are dealing with a good agent.
About the original article. What do they mean with 'safer' ? Security? Honesty?