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The spread sent Greece Fact Check, a nonprofit media observatory, after Chinese creators who post in Greek. Founder Thanos Sitistas and his team landed on three Facebook pages that look independent until the subject turns political: Sweet Hope, run by Elpida Wu; Marianna\u2019s Diary, run by Marianna Lee; and Iro Li\u2019s own page. The shift, Sitistas told RSF, came shortly after the Chinese embassy in Athens, on 19 November 2025, answered Guilfoyle\u2019s remark that Beijing\u2019s hold on Greece\u2019s largest port, Piraeus, was unfortunate. The pages have hosted interviews with Greek politicians at state-sponsored forums in China on a shared future. RSF\u2019s reading, published on 2 October 2026, is that the audience often has no way to know the accounts sit next to Chinese state media machinery.<\/p>\n
Greece Fact Check did not find proof that the influencers knowingly joined a broad propaganda operation. What it did find is structural. Iro Li\u2019s page is sponsored by Zhongshi Vanguard Film and Television Media, a subsidiary of state broadcaster CCTV. Meta\u2019s Ad Library lists Hong Kong Gather Wisdom Network Technology Co., a major Chinese ad distributor on Facebook, as both advertiser and payer for Marianna\u2019s Diary and Sweet Hope. Sitistas put the method to RSF this way: much of the material does not rest on outright falsehoods. Affiliations and ad deals with Chinese Communist Party institutions go undisclosed. Topics Beijing treats as sensitive are handled by omission. Posts on East Turkestan \u2014 the Xinjiang region at the centre of documented abuses against Uyghurs \u2014 show cultural scenes and residents presented as happy and prosperous, and leave out mass detention and coercive assimilation. The aim, in his assessment, is a China that looks modern, peaceful, safe and technologically advanced, so viewers are less open to criticism of Beijing and more open to Chinese interests around Piraeus, the Belt and Road Initiative and relations with the EU.<\/p>\n
The three accounts together have more than 455,000 followers on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube, and individual videos routinely draw hundreds of thousands to millions of views. Facebook has labelled Sweet Hope and Marianna\u2019s Diary \u201cChina state-controlled media.\u201d Sweet Hope still has 94,000 Facebook followers and 113,000 YouTube subscribers; a polished cover of Helena Paparizou\u2019s \u201cMazi Sou\u201d has nearly 200,000 views. Marianna\u2019s Diary has 130,000 Facebook followers and 81,500 on TikTok, with some clips above 1.8 million views. Iro Li\u2019s page is not labelled a state outlet, but she has reported for China Radio International, the international arm of China Media Group. In September 2024 she interviewed Nektarios Farmakis, regional governor of Western Greece, for CRI at the Global Mayors Dialogue in Hangzhou.<\/p>\n
Sitistas told RSF the coordination looked strong: similar formats, professional production, multiple administrators, paid ads and complementary subjects. Between 2021 and 2023 the three accounts had a combined 47 administrators and ran 227 advertisements. An intermediary used by two of them also handled advertising for CRI\u2019s Greek-language service.<\/p>\n
Mainstream Greek outlets have put the same creators on air and in print without the state tie. On 12 February 2022 Open TV introduced Elpida Wu live as a woman from China who adores Greece and Greek songs, then followed her through a 350 km\/h bullet train in Beijing \u2014 a flagship infrastructure project, with no mention of her affiliation. On 29 January 2022 the news site i Efimerida asked who the 28-year-old Chinese woman was who spoke fluent Greek and had taken the internet by storm. Diaspora outlets in the United States and Australia have done the same. That coverage, RSF notes, feeds the unsuspecting audience back to the social accounts.<\/p>\n
The influencer layer sits on older media deals. In 2016 Xinhua signed a cooperation agreement with the Athens-Macedonian News Agency; a second, with Xinhua affiliate China Economic Information Service, followed in 2017. That year Kathimerini signed with Xinhua as well. A later study found the paper republished at least one Xinhua report a week in 2020, 66 articles in all. In September 2023 Naftemporiki agreed to work with China\u2019s Economic Daily, overseen by the CCP\u2019s Central Propaganda Department. CCTV signed a memorandum with public broadcaster ERT in 2016, and in 2020 parliament approved a Sino-Greek film co-production agreement. Those channels, RSF argues, give CCP propaganda outlets a route into Greek news.<\/p>\n
Some of the outlets have owners with business in sectors tied to China. Kathimerini and Skai TV are controlled by the Alafouzos family, whose interests include shipping. Naftemporiki is owned by Dimitris Melissanidis, whose portfolio includes shipping and energy. Engagement has gone past republishing: Chinese ambassadors have been interviewed and their op-eds published. An Athens-based independent journalist, speaking to RSF on condition of anonymity, said that is why there is almost no reporting on what the investments mean for the country\u2019s independence. Press trips are the older tool. Since the early 2010s Beijing has regularly invited Greek journalists; the same reporter told RSF there is little awareness of the propaganda function, and that most who went later published positive stories.<\/p>\n
A 2021 Carnegie Endowment report, which RSF cites, warned that when China pairs investment with strategic messages there is often little room for counter-narratives, especially where independent media or civil society is weak. It called Greece vulnerable to Chinese media narratives and likely to stay that way without specialised coverage of China and of Chinese-European relations.<\/p>\n
Aleksandra Bielakowska, RSF\u2019s Asia-Pacific advocacy manager, ties the pattern to Greece\u2019s press-freedom record. For years the country has sat at the bottom of the EU on RSF\u2019s World Press Freedom Index, and she argues those shortcomings are what let Chinese propaganda take hold: citizens need news that serves their interests and are instead getting more content that serves a foreign state. In the 2 October piece she calls on Greek authorities to investigate the money linking these influencers to Chinese propaganda networks, and to ask whether that is foreign interference, and she urges the government to build conditions for trustworthy journalism in line with European standards. On the 2026 index Greece is 86th of 180, last in the EU for a fifth year, with a score of 55.05. China is 178th, with 13.85.<\/p>\n
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