Yes, but survival depends on knowing clearly what you're surviving on, not 'because I knew this factory earlier.'
In the article, Old Zhou mentions that clients who continued working with him were usually those who 'didn't want to handle so many factories at once and preferred a single point of contact.' This actually reveals that traders still have a market—as long as the complexity you integrate is something clients truly don't want to handle themselves.
Factories doing their own trading have limitations: language, culture, local regulations, diverse product sourcing, and cross-factory coordination are all positions traders can enter. But the prerequisite is that traders must actually perform better in these areas than clients finding factories directly, and clients must feel this difference.
Another direction is upgrading from 'doing odd jobs' to 'being a consultant'—moving from simple order processing to market recommendations, category planning, buyer qualification review and other higher-value services. This requires accumulating market knowledge and changing how you approach business.