China and Russia as service providers for illiberal governance

Abstract Illiberal governance is on the rise across the globe. At the same time, China and Russia are expanding their investment and political presence in many countries. Most studies link these two trends—the rise of domestic illiberalism and China's and Russia's growing geopolitical influence—often assuming that both Beijing and Moscow are responsible for the spread of autocratic values across the globe. Instead, we find that China and Russia are leveraging existing illiberal trends to expand their global reach. In this article, we analyze media coverage between 2015 and 2022 in Hungary, Türkiye, and Kyrgyzstan of these countries' respective bilateral relations with China and Russia, and we show that countries pursue their own interests by collaborating with China and Russia, often framing external engagement as a positive political and economic development. Our analysis shows that China's foreign messaging is consolidated around a set of ideals, while Russian engagement is mostly driven by anti‐Western sentiments.