China’s transformation into the “workshop of the world” just over a decade ago was powered by rural migrant workers earning less than their counterparts at the start of the UK’s industrial revolution in the 18th century as they produced consumer goods for shopping malls worldwide. Now, in a reversal set to drive China’s next big economic evolution, an estimated 220m migrant workers are becoming potent consumers in their own right.

This cohort spent Rmb4.2tn ($677bn) on consumer goods and services in 2012, according to a nationwide survey of 1,500 migrants by China Confidential, a Financial Times research service. Putting this into context, it is equivalent to 1.5 times total consumer spending in Indonesia last year and 23 per cent more than that of Turkey in 2011.

The shift is a metaphor for the country itself, deriving as much from psychological, social and generational shifts as economic inflection points. Migrants born into the relative plenty of the 1990s are considerably more spendthrift than those born in the 1980s and 1970s, spending 53 per cent of their incomes, compared with 47.2 per cent and 38.3 per cent respectively, the survey shows.