If you want to know what many urban Chinese get up to in their spare time, here’s the answer: they go to the mall.

According to China Confidential, a research service from the Financial Times, two-thirds of urban consumers regularly visit s hopp ing malls, with 40.9 per cent of mall visitors going to malls at least once a week (see chart below). Based on China Confidential’s demographic analysis, that works out at about 54m visitors to Chinese malls each week, more than the population of England. And most of these visitors are not just window shopping. On average, mall visitors made nine purchases or transactions over the past six months, with total annual spending in excess of Rmb700bn ($113bn).

This enormous footfall and spending has unsurprisingly sparked a wave of shopping mall construction across the country in recent years.