Anthropic is trying to block Chinese companies like ByteDance and Ant Financial from accessing Claude Code, but they're getting around the restrictions through VPNs and overseas subsidiaries. Alibaba, meanwhile, has banned its own employees from using the tool after hidden code was found that could identify Chinese users.

Anthropic is removing a hidden monitoring feature from its programming tool, Claude Code, after it sparked outrage on social media.

Alibaba has ordered employees to stop using Anthropic's Claude family of AI models and related coding tools, marking a sharp reversal from its previous policy of encouraging staff…