Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba will ban employees from using Anthropic's programming tool Claude Code starting July 10, TechCrunch reports, classifying the tool as high-risk software and directing staff to use the company's own Qoder tool instead.
The ban follows Anthropic's escalating efforts to block Chinese access to its models. The company already prohibits Chinese firms and their foreign subsidiaries from using Claude, and has been closing loopholes that allowed users in China to connect through Singapore-based entities and VPNs.
Those efforts have drawn scrutiny. Anthropic's Thariq Shihipar acknowledged on X that the company ran an experiment in March designed to identify Chinese users — a version of Claude Code that could secretly flag them — calling it "an experiment meant to prevent account abuse from unauthorized resellers and protect against distillation." Shihipar added the team has since deployed stronger mitigations and "been meaning to take this down for a while."
Analysis
Alibaba's move is both defensive and nationalist. If Anthropic is actively hunting Chinese users within its tools, any Chinese company using Claude Code becomes a liability. The Qoder directive also fits Beijing's push for tech self-sufficiency. Expect more Chinese firms to follow — the risk of using American AI coding tools now outweighs the productivity gain.
