Black market workarounds for Claude scale up as Anthropic tightens ID checks
Chinese developers are bypassing new ID checks as demand for Claude remains strong despite official restrictions
US artificial intelligence start-up Anthropic’s move to introduce real-name identity verification has triggered alarm in China, raising the prospect that access to its tools could be cut off entirely and prompting black-market vendors to scramble for workarounds.
The shift highlights the strong demand for Anthropic’s Claude models in China, despite an official ban that also covers Hong Kong and Macau. The company said the restrictions were necessary for national security reasons amid intensifying US-China competition in AI.
Anthropic quietly updated its user policy on Wednesday, requiring users to submit government-issued identification alongside a live selfie to “prevent abuse, enforce our usage policies, and comply with legal obligations”.
The change quickly reverberated across China’s developer community, where many programmers rely on Claude and its flagship coding product, Claude Code, due to their advanced capabilities.
While there are no official figures for Anthropic’s user base in China, access has typically been maintained through virtual private servers that mask location, or via relay platforms such as AICodeMirror, which says it has more than 10,000 registered users and over 200 institutional clients.
The new requirements – akin to “know your customer” checks more commonly seen in the financial services industry – are expected to make such access far more difficult.