It's a common pattern in HN headlines to assign agency to non-US continents and countries. We hear Europe and China doing stuff all the time as well. It's strange.

Isn't that a good deal more reasonable though? China, as a polity, does indeed have agency. It's strange to suggest they don't, as if only America can do things on the world stage.

If someone attributed something to Europe but the only a handful of nations, which didn’t even include the largest ones, were engaging in the behavior, it would also be incorrect.

“Parts of Europe” or “Europe increasingly” etc would be ok (the latter if there was an expected progression of these policies to other European nations).

This headline is similarly misleading.

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Europe usually is (inaccurately) used to mean the EU. Even if not, it never seems to include the biggest European country by land area and population (even if you count just the European part of it).

China is a country so what is the problem there.