The thing I've heard now in several places is that China is drawing down its massive secret stockpile (its _greatly_ reduced imports) which counterbalances a huge amount of this
I do generally agree that the theoretical model being _this_ misaligned with the reality in front of us feels a bit hard to use
That's actually the intended behavior: while reserves are silently being spend is when the crisis is brewing. Although the main point is that nobody knows China's reserves, but this allows to calibrates scenarios based on what you believe is plausible