A Chinese marketing firm hosted a ring of at least 72 fake news sites in 11 languages with corresponding fake social media personas that pushed Chinese government talking points, according to research published Thursday. NBC News has viewed the English-language sites, which obscure their ownership and authors. Their articles frequently criticized the U.S. and the West, and appeared to attempt to smooth over concerns in those countries, such as China limiting democracy in Hong Kong and putting ethnic minority Uyghur citizens into detention camps. According to Mandiant, the company that produced the report, the sites were hosted on internet infrastructure…