China has been hiring social media influencers since as early as 2020 to spread pro-Chinese propaganda in Egypt and among Arabic-speaking social media users. Concealing their Chinese governmental affiliations, they aim to promote a favorable public image for China in the Middle East's most populous and culturally influential country. Hints of such a mission were visible in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Early cases of confirmed deaths due to the pandemic were of high-ranking Egyptian army personnel who worked closely with Chinese workers and engineers involved in the construction of Egypt's new administrative capital. Soon after their deaths, a viral YouTube video showed a number of Egyptians harassing an Asian man on a greater Cairo ring road after he was forced out of an Uber ride. While hundreds of Egyptians denounced the man's treatment as blunt racism, others expressed fear of the Chinese presence in Egypt, declaring them the source of a hypothetical explosion of the virus. This claim of Chinese guilt ignored the country's incompetent health system and battered economy, both of which played a role in Egypt's ability to combat the virus. Among the voices defending the Chinese in Egypt was a young woman using the name Faiha Wang, who boasted of her Chinese origin online. In August 2019, several months before the attack, Wang had created pages on Facebook, TikTok and Twitter. These pages had only a few thousand followers at the time, with comments that mostly praised her beauty and fluently written Arabic. After Wang led a campaign on Facebook urging Egyptians to apologize and support the bullied Asian man, her page garnered hundreds of thousands of followers. She also attracted the attention of Egyptian media outlets that were desperate for stories that do not aggravate or alert unforgiving state censors. Overnight, Wang became a welcome voice in Egyptian media, garnering attention in both mainstream and alternative media, as well as international media covering Egypt. Wang spoke in interviews of her successful campaign, and solid Egyptian-Chinese ties. Traffic to her social media platforms quickly mushroomed, drawing thousands of reactions to her posts of her homeland, which mostly focused on cooking, street food, and Chinese culture. With words of praise for her beauty and smile, her Arab followers seemed less interested in her content on culture. Along with the surge in followers and traffic came a new tone in Wang's posts. Posts praising China and its government's handling of the virus became more frequent, and what seemed sincere patriotic pride gave way to seemingly targeted propaganda. Soon after, more virtual journalists and influencers promoting Chinese views appeared across Egypt's social media sphere. According to her Facebook bio, Wang is a Chinese media employee working and living in Cairo. In the few articles she published in popular, yet not very credible Arab media websites, she introduces herself as a journalist. Alharir.info, an official Chinese website that was created to promote the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) to Arabic audiences, republishes some of Wang’s infrequent writings, and introduces her as the Cairo correspondent for Chinese National Radio. The same description was used in a profile published by El-Watan, a daily publication owned by the Egyptian intelligence-linked UMS, which now owns the vast majority of Egyptian media platforms. According to this profile, Wang is a Muslim who practices during Islam's holy month of Ramadan, learned Arabic in Cairo, and had been living there for three years as of May 2020. El-Watan’s profile of Wang followed her publication of a TikTok video in which she performed in sign language “Tahia Masr,” or “Long Live Egypt,” a song based on the slogan that has become the hallmark of President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi and his rule. Her choice of song likely drew the attention of a wide segment of the Egyptian audience. Evidence found by Global Voices suggests that Wang has been assigned as a production director in Egypt by the China Media Group (CMG), a state media company that was inaugurated in 2018, one year after Wang began working in Egypt in 2017. Before that, Wang spent 10 years working as a broadcaster in China. A report about her on CMG described her as “China Media Group’s first and only Arabic language social media influencer based overseas.” Although CMG's January 2020 report referred to her as the only Arabic-speaking Chinese influencer, Facebook's algorithms indicate there are others.