On July 12, 2016, an international tribunal in The Hague issued one of the most sweeping maritime law rulings in history, finding that China’s nine-dash line claim over most of the South China Sea had no legal basis under international law. China called it “null and void” and went back to what it was doing. Ten years later, on July 12, 2026, that ruling turns a decade old — and China is still doing what it was doing, ASEAN has still never collectively endorsed the decision. The Code of Conduct meant to manage the dispute is collapsing under the weight of the same divisions that prevented a unified response in the first place.
That is the actual South China Sea story of 2026, a reckoning with what a decade of inaction has cost, arriving at the worst possible time.
What the Ruling Said, and What Happened Next
The 2016 arbitral award, issued under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), ruled overwhelmingly in the Philippines’ favour. The tribunal determined that maritime boundaries must be defined by UNCLOS, not by historic claims like China’s nine-dash line. It found that China’s artificially constructed “islands” do not qualify as islands under international law. Therefore, do not generate exclusive economic zones. It found that China had violated the Philippines’ sovereign rights and failed to protect the marine environment.
China’s response was categorical and has never changed. On July 12, 2025 — the ninth anniversary — China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson categorically described the award as “nothing but a piece of waste paper that is illegal, null and void, and non-binding.” The United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, Germany, Australia, and Canada issued public commemorations of the anniversary. Most Southeast Asian states, including other South China Sea claimants, said nothing.
That silence is not accidental. It is structural. ASEAN’s consensus mechanism means opponents of the award can block supportive language while supporters avoid public confrontation. Even active support from Vietnam or the Philippines is insufficient to overcome opposition and silence from other members. Despite numerous ASEAN Foreign Ministers’ Meetings and Summits over the past decade, the organisation has never issued a collective statement formally recognising the 2016 award.
Meanwhile, the facts on the water have moved firmly in China’s direction. Since legal proceedings began under UNCLOS in 2013, Malaysia has reported no fewer than 270 incidents of China Coast Guard and Maritime Militia vessels harassing or assaulting ASEAN member states’ vessels. One such incident took place in December 2025, when five China Coast Guard and several Maritime Militia vessels harassed 20 Filipino fishing boats at the Escoda Shoal, damaging two ships and injuring three fishermen. China has also declared a nature reserve at Scarborough Shoal — a feature the 2016 ruling placed firmly within the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone — and deployed buoys across disputed features in the Spratly Islands.
The Code of Conduct That Wasn’t
The diplomatic vehicle meant to translate the 2016 ruling’s legal clarity into operational reality is the Code of Conduct — a set of rules ASEAN and China have been negotiating, in one form or another, since 2002. A Single Draft Negotiating Text was only agreed upon in 2018, a full 16 years after the Declaration on Conduct of Parties was signed. It was not until 2025 that negotiators began deliberating on what are called “milestone issues” — the most contentious points in the talks.
The Philippines, as the 2026 ASEAN chair, came into office with a stated ambition to close those negotiations before the year ends. The chair’s press statement from the January Foreign Ministers’ Retreat in Cebu committed ASEAN to endeavouring “to conclude the negotiation of an effective and substantive COC that is in accordance with international law, particularly the 1982 UNCLOS, within 2026.” Foreign Affairs Secretary Lazaro announced that face-to-face ASEAN-China COC meetings would happen monthly.
The four unresolved milestone issues reveal why that timeline is unrealistic. They include the geographic scope of the COC, the definition of “self-restraint” and rules covering joint military drills, the relationship between the new text and the 2002 Declaration, and whether the COC will be legally binding. China has proposed banning joint military drills with countries outside Southeast Asia and limiting oil and gas exploration to partnerships within the region — provisions that would effectively prohibit the US-Philippines security cooperation that has been the Philippines’ most effective practical deterrent against Chinese harassment. Manila has flatly rejected those terms.
The 2026 COC deadline, jointly endorsed by ASEAN and China in 2023, is now approaching, with doubts about completion growing. Wu Shicun, chair of the Huayang Center for Maritime Cooperation and Ocean Governance, has argued that the COC is unlikely to be finalised during the Philippines’ chairmanship. One major obstacle is the continuing disagreement over the relevance of the 2016 award itself — Manila is expected to emphasise its legal principles, while Beijing is opposed to any attempt to link the COC with the arbitration process or its conclusions.
The Philippines’ Real Strategy
Watching the gap between Manila’s official ASEAN ambitions and its actual security behaviour, CSIS analysts have reached a clear conclusion: the Philippines will likely use its chairmanship to highlight ASEAN’s commitment to peaceful dispute resolution through its continued emphasis on the COC, without expecting breakthroughs. At the same time, Manila is cultivating its network of “minilateral” defence partnerships capable of generating operational outcomes that ASEAN’s consensus-based mechanisms cannot deliver.
The most tangible evidence came at the ASEAN Defence Ministers’ Meeting Plus, where US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Philippine Secretary of National Defense Gilberto Teodoro jointly announced the creation of Task Force Philippines and the completion of an Alliance Readiness Action Plan — a bilateral security structure that operates entirely outside ASEAN’s multilateral framework, because ASEAN’s multilateral framework cannot produce it.
The Philippines has also pursued parallel defence agreements with Japan, Australia, and France, building what Manila calls a network of partnerships that complement rather than replace ASEAN engagement. The strategic logic is straightforward: ASEAN can set the diplomatic table, but it cannot hold it steady when China is pushing. President Marcos’s challenge is to uphold ASEAN principles while advancing Philippine national interests — and those two objectives have become increasingly difficult to reconcile in the same room.
What the 10th Anniversary Means for ASEAN
The 59th ASEAN Foreign Ministers’ Meeting is scheduled for July 21, 2026 — nine days after the ruling’s 10th anniversary. The question of whether ASEAN will finally issue a collective statement acknowledging the award will be answered in that room.
The most likely scenario is that ASEAN will continue to face a collective dilemma. The second possibility is that the Philippines, as ASEAN chair, promotes stronger language in the Chair’s Statement or Joint Communiqué — stopping short of a direct reference to the 2016 award, but adopting firmer wording emphasising the need to “fully respect legal processes undertaken in accordance with UNCLOS.” This would set a linguistic precedent for future ASEAN statements.
The significance of the 10th anniversary lies not in its ability to transform the dispute itself, but in its capacity to compel all relevant actors to reassess their positions within a regional environment that has shifted considerably since 2016. China is a larger trading partner to ASEAN today than it was then. In 2025, China’s exports of machine tools and automobile parts to ASEAN grew 56.1% and 22% year-on-year — numbers that concentrate economic minds in Bangkok, Jakarta, and Kuala Lumpur whenever the conversation turns to confronting Beijing over maritime law.
That economic dependency is the structural fact that the 2016 ruling could not address, and that no new ruling could either. Beijing will disregard international law when it serves its interests, invoke international law when criticising the United States, and exert maximal pressure on other countries to ignore international standards in favour of pragmatic Chinese interests. Ten years of that pattern have taught ASEAN that the ruling cannot change by itself.
What it can do — what the 10th anniversary may yet accomplish — is force ASEAN to state plainly whether it intends to be an organisation that upholds the international maritime order it claims to value, or one that manages its relationship with China by keeping that question permanently off the table.
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Sources: The Diplomat (July 2025; June 2026); CSIS, “Rhetoric vs. Reality: The Philippines, ASEAN and the South China Sea” (November 2025); RSDI, “Setting the Regional Agenda for ASEAN in 2026” (March 2026); ASEAN Foreign Ministers’ Retreat Press Statement (January 2026); Mizzima English (February 2026); Federal Bar Association International Courts Reporter (January 2026); Eurasia Review (February 2026); Lowy Institute; US-China Economic and Security Review Commission.
