Yes, but many Chinese engineers have such a low level of proficiency that they genuinely struggle to communicate in spoken English. Pronunciation/accent can also be a major barrier to comprehension.

I don't know where in germany you worked at but most offices here are not nearly as english friendly, in my experience it's quite rare and more than half the IT jobs still expect you to know some German otherwise it's a non starter.

I’m European, Dutchman specifically, and I find it mentally difficult, almost impossible sometimes, to not converse in English with a person I know does speak English. I used to work at a Dutch company with ~35 nationalities and me and my Dutch colleagues where often reminded by our non Dutch coworkers that they prefer us to continue water cooler conversation in Dutch and not switched to English when they joined in. For them this was a great way to learn more Dutch. Right now there is also a parent at my kids school who is Welsh, and even though he understands Dutch very well and prefers to speak it, everytime I approach him for a conversation the first sentence in my head is formed in English. I have to consciously switch to Dutch before starting the conversation. I don’t know what it is. Maybe it’s some genetic heritage from when our country was a big international trading nation?

Yes, many German and French multi-national companies have English as the official language.

If there is at least one non-local participant in a meeting, or on an email list, then the discourse has to be popped up to English.

This often happens when none of them are native English speakers, e.g. German & Spanish.

There are specific English proficiency tests bound to levels of management - bad English, no promotion.