View attachment 215181
China's customs data for
July 2026 show imports of
electronic integrated circuits worth about $63.83 billion in that single month. A UIBE trade-data analysis gives a closely related “chip products” figure of about
$63.92 billion, up
70.9% YoY.
Even more remarkable, during
January–July 2026, China imported roughly
$361.8-362.4 billion of IC/chip products. Its largest sources were Taiwan (~$112.45bn), South Korea (~$108.89bn) and Japan (~$31.93bn).
There is also a fascinating change in China's import structure. January-July IC imports were
up 58.3% in value but only about 8.2% in physical units. That means the average imported value per IC rose enormously, roughly
46% by one calculation.
And China simultaneously exported about
$216bn of ICs during Jan–July. So its gross semiconductor trade looked approximately like:
IC imports → $361.8bn
IC exports → $216.0bn
Net IC imports → ~$145.8bn
Despite possessing one of the world's deepest semiconductor manufacturing ecosystems.
N
o major manufacturing economy has a perfectly national supply chain. China importing ~$64bn of ICs in one month is an extreme contemporary demonstration of it.
