The partnership between Italy’s largest news agency, Ansa, and China’s largest multimedia company, Xinhua, began in 2017 with a deal to encourage cooperation between the two companies, allowing them both to expand their global outreach. On 22 March 2019, an accord was signed to build on this agreement. According to Ansa, the accord was signed, “for the diffusion in Italy of an Italian-language Xinhua news service.” A journalist for Italian newspaper Repubblica observed that on a given day in September 2020, ten out of eleven China-related articles on Ansa’s website were written by, or in collaboration with, Xinhua. Xinhua is controlled by the CCP and has been called “the largest propaganda agency in the world” by Reporters Sans Frontières.