Following the 2022 Putin–Xi "partnership without limits" declaration, this pilot study examines whether — and how — Russian and Chinese state-sponsored media align their messaging for international audiences. It focuses on two flagship external broadcasters, Russia's RT and China's CGTN, and on two emblematic issues: Western sanctions on Russia and US–China relations against the backdrop of the war in Ukraine.

The project takes a mixed-methods approach, pairing computational analysis (natural-language processing, computer vision and LLM-based techniques) with multimodal critical discourse analysis of a corpus of English-language video content. It maps where the two states' strategic narratives converge and diverge, and asks what a more — or less — unified Sino-Russian message might mean for audiences in the Global South. The pilot is intended to lay the groundwork for a larger funded programme on Eurasian geopolitical narratives. Planned outputs include a peer-reviewed journal article and a policy paper.