I spent last week in Shanghai and Beijing. I noticed something that is, perhaps, in its own trivial way, telling about the comparison between doing business in China and doing business in Europe where I have also spent a great deal of time developing businesses.

In Europe, when you check into most hotels, even ones that cater to businesspeople from around the globe, you usually need to make sure you have an electrical adapter or ask for one from the hotel. This has apparently been going on, I guess, ever since electricity was developed and various parts of the world ended up standardizing on different plugs. Now, a moment’s reflection tells you that this really doesn’t make any sense. It is quite easy for hotels to build adapters right into the walls–at least at the desk where the clever ones build a set into the draw–so that their foreign guests don’t need to be carrying around adapters or asking the hotel to bring one up.

I didn’t focus on this until I started going to China where the major hotels all have adapters built in–whether you are coming from the States, Australia, or Europe you are up and running. Now, you might argue that this is because the hotels there are new, and they are, but so are many European hotels and even if they aren’t they have probably upgraded their electrical outlets many times in the last few decades.

In fact I think the availability of electrical adapters reflects a fundamental difference in business attitude between China and Europe. The Chinese seem to welcome foreign investment and the businessmen and women who come along with it. And it isn’t just adapters. At least in my experience, the Chinese are far more welcoming and enthusiastic about foreigners coming over to do business than the Europeans (including the Brits). It helps that the language is so impossible that no on even expects you to have mastered it. Beijing ain’t Paris but then, again, Beijing ain’t Paris.

Of course, all isn’t rosy—there are all sorts of barriers to true free trade with China and there is extensive protection of domestic industry. But even here China seems to have something over Europe. The Chinese, in their own way, make it pretty clear that they are imposing limits on foreign firms and trying to create powerful global Chinese companies in certain sectors. The Europeans—there are of course many differences across countries—are usually far more oblique. (President Sarkozy in France being the exception: this new leader is quite clear that he wants to create French national champions and competition be damned—he even got the dreaded word “competition” excised from the new EC Constitution.)

China poses a very severe threat to the European Union. My guess is professionals work twice as much in China as in Europe. And despite having a communist regime, China, in my experience, is far more entrepreneurial. It far easier to start a new business in China than it is in most European countries. Chinese nationals and returnees are forming new businesses like crazy and driving growth and vast increases in personal wealth. It feels more like Silicon Valley of which there is simply no real counterpart across the pond. The work ethic and entrepreneurial culture are much closer to the United States than it is to Europe. Europe will need to catch up or will become a marginal world economy in 20 years. Perhaps hotels could do their part by making it easier for foreign road warriors.