Conceptualising autocracy promotion as commercialisation: marketising narratives and Chinese responses to central Asian protests

In recent decades, the global rise of autocracies has spurred scholarly investigations into why and how these regimes support one another. This article advances these debates by addressing the undertheorised question of what states promote in autocracy promotion. Drawing on insights from narrative theory, it introduces the concept of ‘autocracy commercialisation’, a process through which autocratic practices are framed and disseminated via narratives that present autocracy as a desirable and pragmatic response to states’ governance challenges. These narratives enable the circulation and normalisation of autocratic practices, without relying on direct ideological alignment or intent. The study interprets the variation in narrative strategies through ideal-typical motivational logics, illustrating how autocracies frame governance challenges differently across contexts. Using a multiple holistic case study design, the article conducts a frame analysis of Chinese official discourse on political protests in Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan, employing MAXQDA for qualitative data analysis. In so doing, the article moves beyond intention-centric models, offering a unified framework for diverse mechanisms and conceptualising autocracy promotion as the narrative-based circulation and normalisation of autocratic governance rather than the export of coherent ideology.