Reporters Without Borders (RSF) provides detailed evidence that the Chinese Communist Party is deploying Greek-speaking Chinese bloggers “to amplify its narrative on Greek social media” and calls on Greek authorities to “investigate the financial flows linking these influencers to Chinese propaganda networks.”
Bait and switch
RSF cites the work of Greece Fact Check, which examined the approach and affiliations of popular Chinese influencers who address their Greek audiences in fluent Greek. The influencers’ content is nonpolitical until suddenly it’s political (RSF, October 2, 2026).
Greece Fact Check soon identified three notable Facebook pages: Sweet Hope, run by influencer Elpida Wu; Marianna’s Diary, run by Marianna Lee; and influencer Iro Li’s eponymous page. All three appear to be independent lifestyle pages providing content in Greek about food, travel and everyday life—until they begin introducing more explicitly political messages, such as conducting interviews with Greek politicians at state-sponsored forums in China on Greece and China’s shared bright future.
According to Thanos Sitistas, founder of Greece Fact Check, some of these political messages appeared shortly after the Chinese Embassy in Athens released a statement on 19 November 2025 criticising Kimberly Guilfoyle for her remark that Beijing’s influence over Greece’s largest port, Piraeus, was unfortunate.
Greece Fact Check did not find direct evidence that any of these influencers knowingly took part in a broad propaganda operation. However, it found that Iro Li’s page is sponsored by Zhongshi Vanguard Film and Television Media, a Chinese subsidiary of the state-run broadcaster CCTV. Similarly, the nonprofit also discovered that Meta’s Ad Library listed Hong Kong Gather Wisdom Network Technology Co., a major Chinese advertising distributor on Facebook, as both the advertiser and the entity paying for the advertisements on the pages Marianna’s Diary and Sweet Hope.
“Much of the material we examined did not rely on outright falsehoods,” said Thanos Sitistas…. Instead, these social media accounts do not disclose their affiliations and advertising arrangements with CCP institutions. Subjects that are politically sensitive for Beijing are generally handled through omission and selective presentation rather than direct arguments.”…
Greek Fact Check notes that these three accounts have a collective total of over 455k followers on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube. Their content regularly attracts hundreds of thousands to millions of views, reaching a growing Greek audience that likely has no idea the accounts are linked to the Chinese regime.
Lying by omission is lying. Although Greece Fact Check says that it found no evidence that the influencers are knowingly participating in a CCP propaganda campaign—come on. They omit and selectively present what Beijing wants them to omit and selectively present. They accept a sponsor’s suggestion to criticize the U.S. ambassador to Greece, Kimberly Guilfoyle, right after the Chinese Embassy in Athens slams her for lamenting Beijing’s influence on the Piraeus.
Lifestyle content that suddenly takes a political turn congenial to the CCP doesn’t do so by accident. The content providers must have some idea of why they’re getting the requests they’re getting from organizations which are paying them.
Also, there’s this kind of hint from Facebook, which tags Elpida Wu’s Sweet Hope page with the alert that this is an instance of “China state-controlled media”: “Facebook has designated this publisher because it believes it may be partially or wholly under the editorial control of a state. This is determined by a range of factors, including but not limited to funding, structure and journalistic standards.”
Suppose you had no idea you were under the thrall of the CCP and then you saw this alert taped to your Facebook page. Would you begin to suspect?
Soft target
Aleksandra Bielakowska, RSF Asia-Pacific advocacy manager, observes that the lack of press freedom in Greece makes it more vulnerable to such propaganda campaigns.
“For years, Greece has come in at the bottom of all EU countries on the World Press Freedom Index, and now those shortcomings are enabling Chinese propaganda to take hold. Greek citizens need more reliable news that serves their best interests, yet now they’re being served more content that serves the interests of a foreign state.”
