It is pretty common in the US too...

The US is a big country, results vary wildly. Taking a straw poll of the office everyone replied "China" as the inventor.

Apparently, back in the 19th century people credited Berthold Schwarz [0] with the inventiom of gunpowder. I remember reading Beyond Good and Evil and reading in the preface that "the Germans invented gunpowder" and being rather puzzled, but it turns out that that was considered a fact at the time.

Though I wouldn't be surprised if gunpowder was discovered independently in Europe, or at least partly so because nobody walked out of China with a recipe for it.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berthold_Schwarz

But Europe was the first to do CANNONS on a large scale...