How to Use Chinese LLMs (Qwen, DeepSeek, GLM) Without a Chinese Phone Number

How to Use Chinese LLMs Without a Chinese Phone Number If you've tried signing up for any Chinese AI service, you've seen the same message: Please enter your phone number (+86) to receive a verification code. This single requirement blocks most overseas developers from accessing some of the best-performing and most cost-effective LLMs on the market. This guide covers every workaround I've found — from least to most practical. The Problem China's major AI labs produce world-class models: DeepSeek — DeepSeek V4-Pro matches GPT-4o within 3-5% on coding benchmarks Qwen (Alibaba) — Qwen 3.7-Max beats GPT-4o on long-context tasks (256K tokens) GLM (ZhipuAI) — GLM-4.5 is competitive with Claude for reasoning tasks Baichuan — Strong for Chinese-language generation But every single one requires: A +86 Chinese phone number for registration Alipay or WeChat Pay for billing Chinese-language documentation Method 1: Virtual Chinese Phone Numbers (Fragile) Services like SMS-activate and 5sim offer temporary Chinese phone numbers for ~$1-2. The problem: Chinese providers have gotten aggressive about flagging virtual numbers. Your account gets banned within days. You lose any balance you've added. ❌ Not recommended — too unreliable for production use. Method 2: Third-Party Gateway Services (Recommended) The most practical solution is a gateway that handles the China-side complexity for you. These services: Maintain their own Chinese accounts and infrastructure Register with real Chinese business entities Handle Alipay/WeChat billing on their end Expose everything through a standard OpenAI-compatible API What this means for you: Sign up with email (no phone number needed) Pay via Stripe or PayPal Get a standard API key Use the OpenAI Python/Node.js SDK as-is Migration example (Python): # Before — can't access Chinese models at all # client = OpenAI(api_key="...") # Only works for OpenAI # After — full access to Chinese models client = OpenAI ( base_url = " https://api.tokenmaster.com