Really use your noggin for this one.
Why would the Russian and Chinese governments want to influence a small collection of web forums with no real influence on the wider world?
No, they're not here, they're on Reddit. As are the US and Israeli governments, for that matter. Online influence campaigns are carried out by governments in places where they'll be most effective, and by more than just your spooky oriental despotisms.
Now, why might .ml users, in general, be generally pro-china? The people who made Lemmy as a platform, and the folks who were first to adopt it (instances like Lemmygrad and Hexbear), were ideologically Marxist. Specifically, Marxist-Leninist. Marxist-Leninists, generally, support the existence of actually existing socialist States, as being socialist.
Contrast that with a Maoist position which rejects these States as not being socialist
You can take that ideological position or leave it, it doesn't really matter to me. But what's the more likely explanation here?
That the people who made, and first adopted, Lemmy as a platform tended to have a certain ideology, and so the early instances, like .ml, have people with a broadly shared opinion on a certain topic?
Or that the Chinese government, who probably had no damn clue what Lemmy is, is actively devoting money, and hundreds of people to influence a tiny speck of a Web forum where some nerds circle jerk about Linux, instead of focusing on influencing Facebook or Reddit.