China’s Communist leaders believe they can exploit the recent assassination of former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and use it as a tool to blunt anti-communist sentiment in Japan and marginalize Abe’s allies, such as the Unification Church, according to a former high-level U.S. official and renowned China specialist.
Michael Pillsbury, the Mandarin-speaking analyst who has advised nearly every U.S. president since Richard Nixon, told an international conference in South Korea on Friday that Chinese President Xi Jinping and the Japanese Communist Party both believe they can use the Abe assassination — and the gunman’s claimed grievances with the Unification Church — to smear the church’s reputation, denigrate Abe’s legacy, and compromise religious freedom in Japan and across the region.