I have used Alibaba to find a manufacturer in China (for my Litecoin keychains - Lkeychain.com), and I have also used Bitcoin to do business with people in several continents. And based on my experience, I didn't think much of that article (I had read it before seeing your post).
I think Bitcoin could eventually become an accepted way for international business to send payment in general. Or Alibaba could be an early adopter. I hardly see a reason for Alibaba to fear Bitcoin -- Bitcoin is a tool that could only help Alibaba, as far as I'm concerned (unless they decide to miss an opportunity).
But here's the thing. When people are doing business overseas, with companies they've never dealt with before, some type of escrow is very important. At least that's how I felt, as I read about a lot of people getting ripped off. I found many companies that said they would go through Alibaba escrow on their company profiles would tell me they actually did not use the escrow service (which made me nervous). Since none would use escrow, I would only do business with a company that accepted PayPal, because I knew that if they screwed me, I could get my money back (and I actually did that at one point, when the company wasn't getting back to me). The protection afforded me by PayPal was worth being charged a few percent more by the manufacturer (I also could have paid for an international wire).
Bitcoin would have been cheaper than PayPal or an international wire fee, but I only would have felt comfortable sending Bitcoin if there was some type of multi-sig escrow. I wouldn't be surprised if such Bitcoin transactions become very common in the near future, as companies fill that niche. And then buyers can love BItcoin as much as sellers for international transactions!
