What Is 1688.com?
Alibaba (1688.com) is a famous and outstanding website of global business-to-business (B2B) e-commerce, providing the world's online businessmen with a huge amount of business opportunities and a convenient and safe online trading market.
1688 is now the flagship business and subsidiary of Ali Enterprise and is the leading e-commerce platform for small businesses in China for domestic and international trade.

1688 has covered more than 16 major categories of industries such as raw materials, industrial products, clothing and apparel, household department stores, small commodities, etc., providing a series of supply services from raw material procurement - production and processing - spot wholesale, etc. We can select hot new products and high quality merchants from a large number of products for wholesale.
Differences between 1688(Alibaba) and AliExpress
Language :The majority of dropshippers who don't speak a word of Chinese rely solely on AliExpress. Chinese is used mostly on websites like Taobao and 1688. The linguistic hurdles of Chinese suppliers are another factor that sets 1688 apart from AliExpress.
Business Models

You can observe that the elements displayed at 1688 are nearly identical to those displayed at AliExpress. The design, features, and general feelings of 1688's website are more similar to those of AliExpress and Alibaba.