those eventually end up in exports are usually not counted as imports, because such chips stay in those so called tariff-free zone to be used in production and

those eventually end up in exports are usually not counted as imports, because such chips stay in those so called tariff-free zone to be used in production and then shipped overseas without clearing custom twice. domestic consumption is also at a crazy level, e.g. in Q1 2018, smartphone sales in China had a "hard landing" down 21% YoY, still 91 million phones were sold in Q1 2018 [1]. [1] https://www.canalys.com/newsroom/chinese-smartphone-market-suffers-hard-landing-shipments-decline-21-q1-2018 https://www.canalys.com/newsroom/chinese-smartphone-market-s...