MANILA (UPDATED) - President Rodrigo Duterte may visit China and Japan next month, Malacanang said Thursday, as the country's new leader charts a new foreign policy.

The China trip could happen by mid-October while the Japan trip could be scheduled by the end of that month, Presidential Communications Secretary Martin Andanar said.

Duterte's first foreign trip last month took him to Laos, where he engaged in a diplomatic spat with US President Barack Obama, and Indonesia.

The 71-year-old Duterte, who assumed office on June 30, has increasingly criticized Manila's traditional ally, Washington, while seeking to mend ties with Beijing that have been strained by a bitter sea row.

“So what we do now is we go to China. And rightly so, China is in good faith,” Duterte said in a speech in Villanueva, Misamis Oriental Thursday.

In seeking closer ties with China, Duterte argued that the Philippines could not rely solely on its treaty alliance with the United States.

However, Duterte stressed that his talks with Chinese officials should only revolve around a ruling by a United Nations-backed court which favored the Philippines and said China had no historical rights to resource-rich waters.

“I don’t expect the United States to die for us. So we’ll just have to navigate our way around here. I’m willing to talk. I’m going to China because I want.. I will present the problem. This piece of paper, the tribunal award, we don’t go out of the four corners of this paper,” he said.

MEETING WITH JAPAN'S IMPERIAL COUPLE

A few days after the China trip, Duterte will also embark on a planned "working visit" to Japan, where Tokyo is expected to commit to helping Manila further boost its maritime security capabilities, diplomatic sources said.

According to a number of officials contacted by Kyodo News, the planned trip to Japan is scheduled for Oct. 25-27, and may include a courtesy call to Japanese Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko.

The Japanese imperial couple visited the Philippines last January to mark the 60th anniversary of the normalization of the relationship between the Philippines and Japan.

While a Philippine government source said the trip's purpose is for Duterte's "introductory meeting with the Japanese," sources from Tokyo disclosed the main objective, as far as Japan is concerned, is to commit to providing further maritime security assistance to Manila.

Duterte met with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, for the first time, during the Association of Southeast Asian Nations summit in Laos early this month, where the latter reiterated an invitation for the former to visit Japan.

Trade Secretary Ramon Lopez told reporters in a briefing on Thursday that a group of businessmen may be brought along to Japan for Duterte's working visit "to push for greater trade activities" between the two countries. Manila and Tokyo have a standing economic partnership agreement. - with a report from Kyodo News