According to China travel mavens Jing, statistics on Chinese inbound tourism to Europe from various sources don't add up.

A Chinese government source projected 5.5M visits to Europe in 2017.

The China-EU Tourism Year says there were 12M visits to Europe from China in 2015.

Another Chinese government source says visits from the PRC to the EU increased by 65% yoy in 1H2017.

But according to the EC, only 2.1M visas for the Schengen area were issued to Chinese nationals in 2016. The Schengen area isn't precisely the same as the EU - it excludes a handful of EU countries, but also includes a handful of non-EU countries.

Disparity in the arrival numbers is believed to stem from counting practices - visitors that enter the EU and move around from country to country are counted by each country, and those figures are aggregated to calculate EU arrivals.

Moral: In evaluating the opportunity presented by the China tourism market for your tourism destination or product, and before spending a lot of money developing a China campaign in anticipation of getting your share of 12M+ Chinese visitors, base your planning on the most conservative visitation and spending estimates that you can find from a responsible source.