Not to be too doubtful -- but I don't see anything in that article that says this isn't an Android fork. The fact that they are spending lots of money on development and want to compete with Android doesn't mean they didn't start with it as a base. Android core is open source, well tested, very widely deployed, and works great. Honestly if Alibaba wanted to make a mobile OS play as a new company and didn't start with it I would be very surprised.