The Wall Street Journal reports: "Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte arrived in Japan on Tuesday amid rising concerns about what his recent rapprochement with China and deteriorating ties with the U.S. will mean for regional security. As one of the strongest U.S. allies in Asia—and the Philippines' biggest trading partner—Japan hopes to play a role in patching up relations between Manila and Washington....Mr. Duterte has been looking to build alliances with China, Japan and South Korea, believing the Philippines' future is tied to Asia and not the West, save maybe for Russia....In contrast to his animosity toward the U.S.—the former colonial power in the Philippines—Mr. Duterte is believed to view Japan positively."

The Washington Post comments: "Today, many of the world's leading democracies are afraid of China's economic power. So they make little or no effort to bilaterally press China on human rights issues. But the U.N.  provides opportunities for them to come together to confront China on its human rights record collectively with a lawful international right and without being accused of unilaterally "interfering with another nation's internal affairs." Such an opportunity will come up on Oct. 28, when the U.N. General Assembly will vote to choose new members on its Human Rights Council....During its current three-year term as a member of the U.N. Human Rights Council, China has committed thousands of human rights violations....The upcoming vote will test any democratic country's commitment to human rights. I urge the United States to take the lead to form a collective action among all democracies purporting to strongly support universal principles of human rights. In sum, no reasonable person could possibly find any excuse to either overlook China's recent horrific human rights record or to trust one more time China's promises to be good in the future....Democracies around the world should openly cast a no vote on China."

Bloomberg Markets reports: "China's economic data has long drawn doubters. This year's remarkable run of three quarters all posting the same 6.7 percent year-on-year expansion is reviving the skeptics....Yet if the data is massaged -- and who outside of China's core economic policy makers can really say definitively whether it is or isn't -- there may be a silver lining...."If policy makers do insist on maintaining such high annual growth targets, it is arguably preferable in economic terms that they simply massage the GDP figures in order to meet them on paper rather than overstimulate the economy in an attempt to hit an unrealistically high target," says Julian Evans-Pritchard, an economist at Capital Economics in Singapore....Weighted by swelling debt, excess industrial capacity and the risk of a property bubble in major cities, they're having to walk a fine line to keep growth chugging along toward those goals without triggering a major financial crisis along the way."