Beijing’s recent cybersecurity warning against American artificial intelligence lab Anthropic is expected to accelerate a shift among Chinese developers towards domestic coding alternatives, according to analysts.
China’s National Vulnerability Database (NVDB), overseen by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, issued an alert this week claiming multiple versions of Anthropic’s flagship Claude Code tool contained a security “back door”.
According to the agency, the software could send user locations and identities to remote servers without consent. The NVDB urged local organisations to uninstall the affected versions immediately or upgrade to patched releases.
The warning followed Anthropic’s acknowledgement last week that it had embedded a tracking code into Claude Code to prevent the illicit “distillation” – or unauthorised copying – of its models.
Responding to the NVDB’s alert on Wednesday, Anthropic said its usage policy had always barred users based in China from accessing its services.
Cai Peng, a Beijing-based cybersecurity partner at Zhong Lun Law Firm, said he expected more Chinese companies to abandon foreign AI tools, driven by mounting security concerns and the country’s “strategic imperative” for tech self-reliance.
