On XiaoMi phones at least, this is a system app (see: bloatware). That means you can't clear its app data nor uninstall it, effectively bricking Chrome permanently.
The only thing you can do is uninstall the updates, which force resets its persistence, losing all of your stored data/sessions.
If you've already done that... tough luck, I guess?
That's wrong. You can clear both cache and data of a system app on a typical Android device. You just can't uninstall it.
The base .apk is stored on a read-only system partition, so you can't completely get rid of it, but typically you should be able to remove all data of that app, clear its cache, uninstall any updates it downloaded (since those are stored on another partition), and also disable it.
I haven't used any OS by Xiaomi in a while, so I don't know if they changed anything about that.
Though I used to run their MIUI OS on my Samsung Galaxy (S2 or S5, I don't remember) for a while. That one was the opposite of locked down and even shipped pre-rooted, but it's been a long time.
Nope. Chrome's storage lists "0b" for its storage, which causes XiaoMi's OS to grey out the memory panel for the app. You cannot, for whatever reason, clear the app cache in Chrome's case.
However, sure enough, tab instances persist even across killing the app and then force stopping it.
I have a Redmi Note 7 and it blocked chrome for a minute, but after closing and reopening it the issue resolved itself. Weird, seems very system dependant.
The government of Lithuania actually did an investigation and found that Xiaomi phones spy on their users and contain a (disabled, probably intended for Chinese market) content filter system in their default browser.
The only thing you can do is uninstall the updates, which force resets its persistence, losing all of your stored data/sessions.
If you've already done that... tough luck, I guess?
What an awful bug.