How China's gray market sells Claude tokens at a fraction of the price
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Chinese developers are buying Claude tokens at about 10% of the official price through 'transfer stations'—API proxies hosted overseas that bypass Anthropic's geoblocking, payment, and verification controls. According to Oxford researcher Zilan Qian, this modular supply chain includes account brokers, SMS verification services, and resellers on platforms like Taobao, making it resilient to shutdowns. Operators cut costs by exploiting free credits, enterprise discounts, and splitting Max plans, and may also secretly substitute cheaper models or 'dilute' requests. Qian warns the proxies can see all traffic, and rock-bottom prices may be sustained by selling usage logs, though no proof exists yet. The infrastructure also weakens Anthropic's abuse monitoring and feeds criminal markets for identity and payment fraud. Anthropic, OpenAI, and Google have been fighting such distillation, but the industry is divided on whether to regulate it. Qian concludes that access restrictions create circumvention markets, and current safeguards are insufficient.
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