Anthropic's Ban Fails to Curb China's Booming AI Industry

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Recently, U.S. AI giant Anthropic announced a ban on Chinese-controlled enterprises from using its services, including the Claude model, a family of large language models (LLMs) developed by it.

This is not limited to China alone; overseas companies with direct or indirect Chinese ownership exceeding 50 percent are also within the scope of the ban. Furthermore, the announcement was heavily charged ideologically, falsely accusing foreign entities of leveraging U.S. technology to serve their military and intelligence sectors.

Previously, U.S. AI developers such as Anthropic and OpenAI had already restricted entities within China from using their services. Anthropic's move marks the first time a prominent U.S. AI company has imposed restrictions on overseas Chinese-controlled enterprises.

Against the backdrop of escalating U.S. technological suppression of China, it is hardly surprising that U.S. AI giants like Anthropic are tightening restrictions on Chinese companies — whether driven by "corporate self-awareness" or underlying political forces.

But in today's China, where domestic models like DeepSeek and Qwen are flourishing and the concept of "technological self-reliance" is deeply ingrained, forward-thinking tech companies will not pin their future on U.S. AI technology.

Banning Chinese users will not stifle the development of China's AI industry. On the U.S. social platform Reddit, under a post about Anthropic's ban, the vast majority of comments viewed it as positive news for China's domestic AI models.

One particularly telling comment was: "Remember what happened after the chip sanctions were announced? What was the long-term impact on China? It only spurred China to innovate around chips. This is just another identical 'nothingburger.'"

The future path of U.S. AI technology may grow narrower.

Currently, to maintain a unilateral technological advantage and prevent other countries from leveraging its achievements, the vast majority of U.S. AI models have adopted a closed-source development approach.

In July, The New York Times reported that even Meta, which had previously adhered to open-source development, would shift to developing closed-source AI models. Renowned U.S. AI policy expert Ethan Mollick lamented on social media that with this, the U.S. is mostly out of the frontier open source large LLM race.

Compared to open-source, closed-source inevitably hampers technological iteration and innovation. As one of the world's largest AI markets, China boasts the most comprehensive industrial categories and the richest AI application scenarios. By "voluntarily withdrawing" from the Chinese market, Anthropic is not only losing "hundreds of millions of dollars," but also a crucial source of experience and momentum for driving technological iteration and development.

In contrast to the U.S., China's AI models have consistently adhered to an open-source development philosophy, continuously achieving technological breakthroughs.

In July, multiple foreign media outlets reported that according to the rankings by "LMArena," a benchmark testing platform created by University of California researchers, Chinese open-source AI models such as Kimi K2 by Moonlit AI, DeepSeek R1 by DeepSeek, and Qwen3 by Alibaba had outperformed similar products from U.S. giants Google and Meta.

According to Tech Wire Asia, the future of AI may indeed be open — and increasingly shaped by Chinese innovation.

In April, Anthropic accused China of smuggling chips. At the time, a spokesperson for U.S. chip company Nvidia criticized the allegation, saying: "American firms should focus on innovation and rise to the challenge, rather than tell tall tales..." This criticism equally applies to Anthropic's recent restrictions on Chinese users.

Banning Chinese users is a loss for U.S. AI companies. Instead of becoming pawns in the politicization, instrumentalization, and weaponization of technological issues, tech companies like Anthropic should focus on technological innovation and their own development.

Source: Science and Technology Daily