China calls it a piece of waste paper. But it is one of the most important international legal decisions in history. July 12, 2026 marks 10 years since the Philippines prevailed against China in the South China Sea Arbitration. The landmark ruling held that China violated the Philippines’ rights under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. China refused to participate in the arbitration and has not fully complied with the ruling, causing some commentators to dismiss the significance of the case. However, the ruling has tremendous implications for regional politics–and for any future war between the United States and China.
The Philippines filed the case over China’s repeated violations of its sovereign rights within its 200-nautical mile exclusive economic zone. China claims sovereignty over most of the South China Sea based on its so-called nine-dash line, a feature of Chinese Communist Party maps since the 1940s. China’s claims overlap with those of the Philippines, Vietnam, Brunei, Taiwan, Malaysia, and Indonesia. In 2012, China occupied Scarborough Shoal, a traditional Filipino fishing ground inside the Philippines’ EEZ, endangering the lives of Philippine personnel and fishermen in the process. Simultaneously, China was causing tremendous environmental damage by building artificial islands elsewhere in the EEZs of the Philippines and other neighbors. China swiftly built runways, hangars, radomes, and other indicators that it was militarizing the islands.
Unable to counter China militarily without U.S. support, the Philippines initiated arbitration under Annex VII of UNCLOS in 2013, with the Permanent Court of Arbitration acting as registry. (A reader chastised me for not including the Annex number and specifics of tribunal constitution in a previous column, so I did it this time!) The Philippines’ action was a classic lawfare move: use law to achieve a strategic or military objective in lieu of kinetic force.
China refused to participate. It alleged that the arbitration itself was illegal because the Philippines had not negotiated sufficiently before filing. Understanding the importance of the case, the arbitrators pieced together China’s position from its official statements and state practice. China’s foreign ministry released a position paper while the case was in progress—which read remarkably like a legal brief—that the arbitrators considered as well.
What The South China Sea Arbitration Actually Decided
The case was not directly about sovereignty. The Tribunal did not have jurisdiction to determine sovereignty over the contested maritime features—the generic term covering the contested rocks, reefs, islands, and low-tide elevations in the South China Sea. The case was about violations of UNCLOS, which covers the rights of states related to business, environment, natural resources, and freedom of navigation. However, to decide whether China violated UNCLOS through its island-building campaign and dangerous activity at Scarborough Shoal, the Tribunal needed to determine the legal status of each feature. That determination would, in turn, have implications for related rights to sovereign territory and natural resources. For example, a rock generates a 12-nautical mile territorial sea but no exclusive economic zone. Low-tide elevations and reefs generate nothing at all.
The Tribunal issued a sweeping win for the Philippines. It found that none of the contested features were legally islands. The effect was to invalidate both China’s nine-dash line and its artificial island-building campaign—a massive blow to China’s national pride. The Tribunal also found that China had caused severe environmental damage and performed unsafe maneuvers that violated the rights of Philippine personnel and Filipino fishermen. China swiftly responded, calling the decision a piece of “waste paper” and launching a worldwide media campaign to denounce it.
Ten Years Of Chinese Defiance Of The South China Sea Arbitration
Ten years later, skeptics of the ruling’s significance have plenty to point to. After all, China did not abandon its artificial islands, and has increased their military and surveillance capacity. Two months before the decision, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte was elected. Duterte famously distanced himself from the United States and cozied up to China (and is currently awaiting an International Criminal Court trial for crimes against humanity). China’s law enforcement and military vessels continue to operate dangerously in the South China Sea, frequently using water cannons and even severing the thumb of a Philippine sailor at a contested feature in 2024. Manila, as ASEAN chair, is still trying to negotiate the same South China Sea Code of Conduct with China that ASEAN has been pursuing since 2002, with little progress. One of the sticking points? China refuses the Code to be legally binding.
China also still maintains control over Scarborough Shoal, and is using lawfare to bolster its claim. After the decision, China allowed Filipino fishermen back at Scarborough Shoal for several years. In 2019, Chinese president Xi Jinping offered then-Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte a massive oil and gas deal in exchange for abandoning the arbitration award. When Duterte refused, China began blocking Filipino fishermen from the shoal again. In 2025, China doubled down on its claims to the Shoal. It established a “nature reserve” there, creating a domestic legal pretext to arrest any Filipinos fishing at the shoal. It also flipped the logic of the ruling on its head, casting itself as the “lawful” protector of the environment.
The South China Sea Arbitration Set The Rules of the Game
Despite China’s imperfect compliance, the decision has set the rules of the game in the South China Sea. It now sets the terms for diplomacy and negotiation in the region. On the tenth anniversary of the ruling, the United States, the Philippines, and 12 other states reaffirmed their commitment to the decision and denounced China’s unlawful behavior. At least 27 states have called for the ruling to be respected, and 17 more have issued generally positive statements about it. Only 8 states have publicly rejected the ruling. Other South China Sea claimant states use the ruling to justify their own actions—and are sharply denounced by China each time. Malaysia and Indonesia have referenced the decision in UN communications. When Vietnam and Indonesia, and Indonesia and Malaysia, settled years-long maritime boundary disputes according to UNCLOS, China sent ships to enforce its own disputed claims with those states.
Ten years later, China is still running scared of the decision. China has not created any new islands in the Spratlys since the award. It has never said why. China’s media denunciation of the award continues. In 2023, the Philippine Coast Guard launched an assertive transparency strategy to expose China’s illegal, coercive, aggressive, and deceptive behavior in the South China Sea. The Philippines began to release video of China violating the arbitration ruling, and calling out the illegality of China’s actions on social media. Philippine officials credit the transparency strategy with garnering international support for the Philippines and strengthening its military alliances. The strategy has also angered China, which has demanded that Manila rein in the Coast Guard spokesman who leads it.
The Philippines/China arbitration decision has changed the behavior of states across the globe. The ruling converted China’s South China Sea claims from “contested” to “unlawful” in the eyes of the world. The decision is now the shared legal vocabulary of states, and states must support or protest it. Every time a state invokes or relies upon the ruling, its effect and importance compounds—making it harder for China to ignore. And every time China denounces the decision, it pays a cost in legitimacy. Whether China ultimately complies with the decision may determine whether war in the Pacific will begin. Meanwhile, the Philippines keeps showing the world how a determined state can fight and win on the legal battlefield.
