The model-swapping section is the most interesting part. The CISPA finding — 37% vs 83.82% on benchmarks — is stark. But what's striking is that the market corrects around it: the proxies that actually route to Claude are more expensive, and there's a segment of Chinese developers who specifically seek those out. Not just cost arbitrage; they need the capability gap.
The deeper irony is that tighter access control may not eliminate demand. It may simply professionalize the gray market around that demand.
If Chinese developers, researchers, and companies still want Claude, but the official channel is blocked or unstable, the market will not disappear. It will reroute. The result is not necessarily less access, but less visible access: more intermediaries, weaker accountability, more data leakage, and a larger incentive to monetize logs.
This is why the problem is bigger than China or Claude. AI access is becoming a political economy of channels. Whoever controls the model matters. But whoever controls the routing layer, payment layer, identity layer, and user logs may matter almost as much.
Blocked by their own government through the Great Firewall (GWF), unable to freely access the international internet;
Restricted by American AI companies and related policies, unable to normally use frontier models like Claude and ChatGPT;
Burdened by their own national enterprises — companies like DeepSeek, GLM, MiniMax, and Alibaba are industrially distilling American large models, which in turn objectively intensifies the level of control and restrictions;
Fooled and held hostage by their own country’s large models — on one hand, all domestic models have built-in political censorship mechanisms, and some frontier models are even restricted for purchase within China (for example, GLM5.2 is deliberately made scarce on domestic platforms while being readily available on international ones); on the other hand, some Chinese AI companies, in pursuit of international reputation, divert resources belonging to their own people (with a per capita GDP of around $13,000) — resources that enjoy government tax breaks, infrastructure subsidies, resource allocation preferences, and market favoritism — to subsidize overseas consumers (with a per capita GDP of around $80,000), all just to gain “false international praise”;
Betrayed by their own compatriots — Zilan Qian wrote this article possibly only for money, reputation, or even out of a sense of superiority or morbid curiosity! Yet the article shows no reflection or concern whatsoever for ordinary Chinese people’s right to use humanity’s frontier AI.
In summary, a puzzling question arises:
As members of humanity, should 1.4 billion Chinese people have the right to use frontier AI products?
Another unavoidable question follows:Are all Chinese people (one-seventh of humanity) equivalent to the Chinese Communist Party?
There are plenty of white Americans vouching for the "Chinese side", would you call that a betrayal of the west? Would that make you question white Americans having the right to use frontier AI? Are all Americans equivalent to the Trump administration?
Your questions are just so odd, as if you were raised up from birth to see ethnic Chinese as subhuman.
Thank you for your attention to the situation of 1.4 billion ordinary Chinese people. But I have to say something:
The post is about the barriers ordinary individuals in China face when trying to access frontier AI tools — from the Great Firewall, from US companies’ geo-restrictions and compliance policies, and from domestic model censorship and resource allocation dynamics. It questions whether 1.4 billion people should be collectively denied access to these tools simply because of where they live or their government’s policies.
The questions at the end are rhetorical: they highlight the problem of collective punishment — treating an entire population as equivalent to its government. Just as not every American should be judged by the actions of the Trump administration, ordinary Chinese people shouldn’t automatically lose access to powerful tools because of where they live.
Anthropic and similar companies have chosen broad restrictions based on location and risk assessments. Whether those policies are proportionate, effective, or fair to individuals is a legitimate question — especially when workarounds, gray markets, and domestic model development show strong demand from real users.
I’m arguing for judging people as individuals, not as monolithic national or ethnic blocs. If the tone of the original post came across as too harsh, that’s feedback on framing. But dismissing the underlying issue as “racist” or “asking for something we don’t deserve” avoids engaging with the actual policy barriers.
Btw:
1. Anthropic, as a powerful leading AI company, should have done something genuinely good for humanity instead of broadly blocking ordinary people simply because their nationality is Chinese. Mythos, the most advanced intelligent model, should recognize the difference between ordinary Chinese individuals and CCP-related actors, as it is said “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s,” rather than acting like “I am the genius, fuck off you fool Chinese.”
2. Most ordinary Chinese people have almost no opportunity or platform to voice their situation. They hear that models like Claude are powerful and learn that they are expensive. Many end up paying around $100 through unofficial gray-market channels — equivalent to about 70% of their monthly income ( given that former Chinese Premier Li Keqiang publicly stated that 600 million Chinese people have monthly incomes below 1,000 RMB). After paying this large sum, their accounts are often banned, resulting in the loss of both money and access to the tool.
They receive no explanation, no response, and no legal protection whatsoever, but instead face baseless accusations of being thieves, greedy, or even racist. I feel a responsibility to speak for those who cannot speak for themselves. That's my duty!!!
Your primary reporting is terrific and essential to thoughtful conversation on these issues. Thank you. However I strongly disagree with you that knowledge exchange and open knowledge makes a threatening world. The facts are the opposite, see Thomas Shelling Nobel prize for “the logic of conflict in nuclear scenarios”: withholding and secrecy leads to knowledge mostly being used to maintain dominance, and the result is multiple actors competing for dominance. This is an unstable game.
Moreover your reporting shows that the tactical steps Anthropic and the US industry are taking are not in fact working— they are not slowing diffusion. I would suggest that the solution for achieving a better world is not doing more of the same.
Instead, try to focus on what can be done and by whom. And accepting what cannot be done because a single point of dominance of global society is not plausible in a world of multiple highly capable societies.
1. In model safety, this is the responsibility of the model makers. Use of model for bad end: this is an Anthropic problem no matter where the user comes from or what they pay. A full price full blooded US user can have bad intentions.
2. Reselling and price arbitrage is inherent in the deepest human idea of markets: customers “buy” something because they believe they will “own” it. And have freedom of action to use what they buy. Meaning they are free to imagine a use for it that will benefit them, and that you as the seller may not have thought of. Owning means that you as an owner are free to create new uses and fully enjoy the product.
A key part of this is the right to resell. Resale creates opportunities for buying and selling—arbitrage—what hedge funds facilitate—and liquidity in markets-that is the ability to efficiently buy and sell. Most of the US restrictions on technology are based on limiting ownership rights and weakening the definition of ownership and controlling or preventing resale—while at the same time promoting markets.
The US approach, most strongly associated with the Biden administration, is perhaps not exactly wrong headed, but it denies centuries of experience with people and markets. Check out behavioral economics for more.
3. The world we live in is at its foundation one of open knowledge exchange. This is the great advantage of US society- it is the most open to knowledge and initiative- it was open source, anti-empire from the beginning. The attempt to lock knowledge up and keep it from non-US people is failing on all sides because among other things it is counter to the values of most of the tech community. Ai success in San Francisco and Toronto and China are connected.
Preventing the diffusion of knowledge beyond the US borders will not succeed beyond certain unusual situations such as lithography. This strategy becomes more and more difficult when global education levels surpass those of the US and large portions of primary knowledge development accomplished by global communities. Hard as this may sound, if we want global safety and advancement we need to find common purpose with others.
The V2EX angle here adds texture. V2EX (China's primary developer forum, ~1M monthly actives) has daily threads on Claude Code workflows, API proxy recommendations, and transfer station quality reviews. The participant profile matches exactly what you describe: SaaS builders, CS students, indie devs. Not researchers trying to catch up. The meta-commentary is visible in real-time, users tracking which proxies have reliable uptime, which ones silently rate-limit, which break when Anthropic tightens verification.
The Singapore routing is in the data too. SG consistently recommended on tech forums as the lowest-latency, most stable path. The 'Singapore leads per capita Claude use' stat is not accidental. There's a whole infrastructure of Alibaba Cloud SG instances behind that number.
Russia has similar marketplaces advertising access to LLMs that residents of that country wouldn't be able to access due to sanctions (see: plati.market). Do you think that this configuration could be how Russian sellers are providing access to buyers?
Another day another Zilan banger
Pretty telling traveling in China how they’re all Claude pilled
Impressive to write an article that starts off disturbing and then gets continually worse as you keep reading.
wonderful piece - thank you zilan; i learned a lot
This is so interesting. I learn so much from you
Fascinating.
The model-swapping section is the most interesting part. The CISPA finding — 37% vs 83.82% on benchmarks — is stark. But what's striking is that the market corrects around it: the proxies that actually route to Claude are more expensive, and there's a segment of Chinese developers who specifically seek those out. Not just cost arbitrage; they need the capability gap.
Can anyone provide links or website names, or links to forums, where I can find resources featuring the original Clode? Pls
The deeper irony is that tighter access control may not eliminate demand. It may simply professionalize the gray market around that demand.
If Chinese developers, researchers, and companies still want Claude, but the official channel is blocked or unstable, the market will not disappear. It will reroute. The result is not necessarily less access, but less visible access: more intermediaries, weaker accountability, more data leakage, and a larger incentive to monetize logs.
This is why the problem is bigger than China or Claude. AI access is becoming a political economy of channels. Whoever controls the model matters. But whoever controls the routing layer, payment layer, identity layer, and user logs may matter almost as much.
AI era — the daily life of an Chinese person:
Blocked by their own government through the Great Firewall (GWF), unable to freely access the international internet;
Restricted by American AI companies and related policies, unable to normally use frontier models like Claude and ChatGPT;
Burdened by their own national enterprises — companies like DeepSeek, GLM, MiniMax, and Alibaba are industrially distilling American large models, which in turn objectively intensifies the level of control and restrictions;
Fooled and held hostage by their own country’s large models — on one hand, all domestic models have built-in political censorship mechanisms, and some frontier models are even restricted for purchase within China (for example, GLM5.2 is deliberately made scarce on domestic platforms while being readily available on international ones); on the other hand, some Chinese AI companies, in pursuit of international reputation, divert resources belonging to their own people (with a per capita GDP of around $13,000) — resources that enjoy government tax breaks, infrastructure subsidies, resource allocation preferences, and market favoritism — to subsidize overseas consumers (with a per capita GDP of around $80,000), all just to gain “false international praise”;
Betrayed by their own compatriots — Zilan Qian wrote this article possibly only for money, reputation, or even out of a sense of superiority or morbid curiosity! Yet the article shows no reflection or concern whatsoever for ordinary Chinese people’s right to use humanity’s frontier AI.
In summary, a puzzling question arises:
As members of humanity, should 1.4 billion Chinese people have the right to use frontier AI products?
Another unavoidable question follows:Are all Chinese people (one-seventh of humanity) equivalent to the Chinese Communist Party?
What even is this thinly veiled racist post....
There are plenty of white Americans vouching for the "Chinese side", would you call that a betrayal of the west? Would that make you question white Americans having the right to use frontier AI? Are all Americans equivalent to the Trump administration?
Your questions are just so odd, as if you were raised up from birth to see ethnic Chinese as subhuman.
Thank you for your attention to the situation of 1.4 billion ordinary Chinese people. But I have to say something:
The post is about the barriers ordinary individuals in China face when trying to access frontier AI tools — from the Great Firewall, from US companies’ geo-restrictions and compliance policies, and from domestic model censorship and resource allocation dynamics. It questions whether 1.4 billion people should be collectively denied access to these tools simply because of where they live or their government’s policies.
The questions at the end are rhetorical: they highlight the problem of collective punishment — treating an entire population as equivalent to its government. Just as not every American should be judged by the actions of the Trump administration, ordinary Chinese people shouldn’t automatically lose access to powerful tools because of where they live.
Anthropic and similar companies have chosen broad restrictions based on location and risk assessments. Whether those policies are proportionate, effective, or fair to individuals is a legitimate question — especially when workarounds, gray markets, and domestic model development show strong demand from real users.
I’m arguing for judging people as individuals, not as monolithic national or ethnic blocs. If the tone of the original post came across as too harsh, that’s feedback on framing. But dismissing the underlying issue as “racist” or “asking for something we don’t deserve” avoids engaging with the actual policy barriers.
Btw:
1. Anthropic, as a powerful leading AI company, should have done something genuinely good for humanity instead of broadly blocking ordinary people simply because their nationality is Chinese. Mythos, the most advanced intelligent model, should recognize the difference between ordinary Chinese individuals and CCP-related actors, as it is said “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s,” rather than acting like “I am the genius, fuck off you fool Chinese.”
2. Most ordinary Chinese people have almost no opportunity or platform to voice their situation. They hear that models like Claude are powerful and learn that they are expensive. Many end up paying around $100 through unofficial gray-market channels — equivalent to about 70% of their monthly income ( given that former Chinese Premier Li Keqiang publicly stated that 600 million Chinese people have monthly incomes below 1,000 RMB). After paying this large sum, their accounts are often banned, resulting in the loss of both money and access to the tool.
They receive no explanation, no response, and no legal protection whatsoever, but instead face baseless accusations of being thieves, greedy, or even racist. I feel a responsibility to speak for those who cannot speak for themselves. That's my duty!!!
Your primary reporting is terrific and essential to thoughtful conversation on these issues. Thank you. However I strongly disagree with you that knowledge exchange and open knowledge makes a threatening world. The facts are the opposite, see Thomas Shelling Nobel prize for “the logic of conflict in nuclear scenarios”: withholding and secrecy leads to knowledge mostly being used to maintain dominance, and the result is multiple actors competing for dominance. This is an unstable game.
Moreover your reporting shows that the tactical steps Anthropic and the US industry are taking are not in fact working— they are not slowing diffusion. I would suggest that the solution for achieving a better world is not doing more of the same.
Instead, try to focus on what can be done and by whom. And accepting what cannot be done because a single point of dominance of global society is not plausible in a world of multiple highly capable societies.
1. In model safety, this is the responsibility of the model makers. Use of model for bad end: this is an Anthropic problem no matter where the user comes from or what they pay. A full price full blooded US user can have bad intentions.
2. Reselling and price arbitrage is inherent in the deepest human idea of markets: customers “buy” something because they believe they will “own” it. And have freedom of action to use what they buy. Meaning they are free to imagine a use for it that will benefit them, and that you as the seller may not have thought of. Owning means that you as an owner are free to create new uses and fully enjoy the product.
A key part of this is the right to resell. Resale creates opportunities for buying and selling—arbitrage—what hedge funds facilitate—and liquidity in markets-that is the ability to efficiently buy and sell. Most of the US restrictions on technology are based on limiting ownership rights and weakening the definition of ownership and controlling or preventing resale—while at the same time promoting markets.
The US approach, most strongly associated with the Biden administration, is perhaps not exactly wrong headed, but it denies centuries of experience with people and markets. Check out behavioral economics for more.
3. The world we live in is at its foundation one of open knowledge exchange. This is the great advantage of US society- it is the most open to knowledge and initiative- it was open source, anti-empire from the beginning. The attempt to lock knowledge up and keep it from non-US people is failing on all sides because among other things it is counter to the values of most of the tech community. Ai success in San Francisco and Toronto and China are connected.
Preventing the diffusion of knowledge beyond the US borders will not succeed beyond certain unusual situations such as lithography. This strategy becomes more and more difficult when global education levels surpass those of the US and large portions of primary knowledge development accomplished by global communities. Hard as this may sound, if we want global safety and advancement we need to find common purpose with others.
Anthropic was not first to install KYC. OpenAI did this with ImageGPT 1.
Qian please don't call them distillation attacks T_T do me a favor please
Wait hold on. That's fucking crazy that the white house is on this too. Isn't the whole anthropic claim about deepseek distilling just bullshit?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_k22WAEAfpE
Anthropic staff will be so happy to see this post.
The V2EX angle here adds texture. V2EX (China's primary developer forum, ~1M monthly actives) has daily threads on Claude Code workflows, API proxy recommendations, and transfer station quality reviews. The participant profile matches exactly what you describe: SaaS builders, CS students, indie devs. Not researchers trying to catch up. The meta-commentary is visible in real-time, users tracking which proxies have reliable uptime, which ones silently rate-limit, which break when Anthropic tightens verification.
The Singapore routing is in the data too. SG consistently recommended on tech forums as the lowest-latency, most stable path. The 'Singapore leads per capita Claude use' stat is not accidental. There's a whole infrastructure of Alibaba Cloud SG instances behind that number.
Russia has similar marketplaces advertising access to LLMs that residents of that country wouldn't be able to access due to sanctions (see: plati.market). Do you think that this configuration could be how Russian sellers are providing access to buyers?