I lived 12 years in China and now 1.5 in EU. Traveled both fairly extensively. The above is just my experience.
We left China in big part due to authoritarian politics. But if what's happening in EU (and US? never been there tho) is "democracy" then maybe we need to rethink.
I like many things in EU, and I dislike many things as well. At least here I'm not worried for my safety when I discuss it online, aside from some people calling it a psy-op or whatever.
In the EU countries I have visited you can ask most coffee shop and restaurants to use their toilet without any issue. In the most touristy places you are supposed to buy something, which usually is a coffee or a small bottle of water.
The only thing propping it up is that unlike a hundred years ago, people generally now have the common decency to not piss everywhere, which I think would reverse this idiocy rather quickly.
No, commonly here on HN it is American commentators who've visited like Italy or Greece or France once, then they extrapolate their experience in a tourist-heavy city, looking/behaving as an American, over the entire continent. Happens almost every day here.
Any comment mentioning EU/Europe here has to be taken with a huge grain of salt. Usually it turns out they've visited some countries and the experience is unique for where they visit.
To be fair, the same happens towards the US too, someone visits Montana then assumes a bunch about the entire country. I guess "American visiting country in Europe" is just more common here, given the US bias on this forum usually.
Every non-EU citizen should be aware of what to expect in Germany, and even worse in France, Italy or Greece. Shithole is a perfect description - it is just unbelievable how barbarically bad we are at public restrooms in comparison to anything you find across developed Asian countries.
Even beyond just cleanliness, you always have harassing bathroom bouncers in private AND public facilities in Germany, basically acting as highway robbers to steal your money without ever actually cleaning anything. At best they look up from a phone and nod when you pay your urine toll.
The only half usable bathrooms are from corporations like Sanifair which are making a business out of uncontrollable, basic human bodily functions. China doesn't need to invest in psyops against Germany or the EU at all if we are perfectly able to make ourselves look bad in comparison. Just use Occams razor.
And of course the major issue is vandalism and destruction by a huge population of junkies, homeless, aggressive (male) youths etc. on top of anti-social behavior, hegemonially pushed by American individualism ever since WW2. I guess this is the point where you can accuse me of injecting ideas that could originate from Chinese psyops? In the end I want a society that cares for its fellow citizens.
Maybe you'll make it out to all be like the nordics. Maybe you'll make it all out to be like Sicily, or Croatia. Whatever lie you have, Europe has something to back you up, lol.
I'm exaggerating (less than I want to be) but not joking here.
Someone from bumbfuck nowhere visits one big city and generalizes their experience, good or bad.
Or how all of HN is constantly convinced that the entire US is only SV or NYC, which is why they continually praise how Uber broke the "Taxi Cartel" that didn't exist anywhere else.
Or how much of the country only knows of cities from the propaganda they were fed by Fox News, which is why my brother told my mom that Portland Maine was a war zone back during the BLM marches, because 20 kids were laying down in front of the police department, which was a nothing burger and cops weren't even bothered, more like amused.
But the city is somehow not a warzone when ICE abducts 100 people off the street and kills at least one.