The Wall Street Journal comments: "China has revised the way it measures the size of its economy, the first such change since 2002, in what it says is an effort to better align its data with international standards. The country's National Bureau of Statistics unveiled the revisions in a statement posted on its website Friday, three days before the release of its closely watched gross domestic product data for the second quarter. The adjusted framework for calculating GDP—approved last week by China's cabinet, the State Council—includes the addition of the health-care, tourism and 'new, emerging economy' industries, the bureau said. The new economy typically refers to those companies that are in the high-technology sector or considered to be environmentally friendly. The bureau didn't say whether the changes would be reflected in the GDP figures set for release Monday."

The Washington Post comments: "When the Nobel committee awarded Liu Xiaobo, who died Thursday in China, the Peace Prize in 2010, Fang Lizhi, the Chinese astrophysicist dissident, wrote from exile in America that the award challenged the West to re-examine a dangerous notion that has become prevalent since the 1989 massacre: that economic development will inevitably lead to democracy in China. The Nobel award also challenged something else, and that was the idea, popular among many Western academics, businessmen and strategists, that rebels such as Liu were outliers from mainstream Chinese culture. While Americans took Soviet and South African dissidents such as Andrei Sakharov and Nelson Mandela seriously, their Chinese counterparts never got the recognition they deserved. China had no tradition of liberal thought or democracy, went the argument... Liu belonged to a rich tradition of Chinese liberal thought that argued that if China wanted to rediscover its greatness it had to value individual freedom and rights as it modernized. Many of these men and women were educated in the United States and for decades in the early 20th century they represented the conscience of their nation. But like Liu, many of these liberal thinkers had a difficult relationship not only with their government but also with Westerners who belittled their influence."