AliExpress
Chinese online marketplace
AliExpress (Chinese: 全球速卖通) is an online retail service based in China and owned by the Alibaba Group. Launched in 2010, it is made up of small businesses in China and other locations, such as Singapore, that offer products to international online buyers. It was the most visited e-commerce website in Russia and was the 10th most popular website in Brazil. It facilitates small businesses to sell to customers all over the world. AliExpress has drawn comparison to eBay, as sellers are independent and use the platform to offer products to buyers. As of March 2024, the number of global users of the AliExpress mobile app reached 8.18 million, a 130% year-on-year increase, setting the highest record since statistics began in 2016.
Business model
AliExpress started as a business-to-consumer buying and selling portal. Aliexpress is a subsidiary of Alibaba Group, but unlike its sister organization Alibaba.com, it is not a business to business entity but a business to customer platform that sells different products to customers worldwide where they can purchase single piece items. In 2010 the platform went live and offers electronics, clothing, home goods at wholesale pricing. It has since expanded to include business-to-consumer, consumer-to-consumer, cloud computing and payment services.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “AliExpress” is chinese online marketplace. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through AliExpress, Chinese and online, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “chinese online marketplace” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q29904317. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2010, 2024 and 2016.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.
- Subject orientation
- Search vocabulary
- Locating named sources
The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “AliExpress”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow AliExpress primary sources, AliExpress archive and AliExpress research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “AliExpress”?
- Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
- What terminology or title could unlock a more precise catalogue search?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “AliExpress” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.