The 2016 South China Sea Arbitration Award Did Not Fail

Philippine Senator Risa Hontiveros raises a Philippine flag on Thitu Island in the South China Sea on February 21, 2026 | Photo by JAM STA ROSA / AFP

In an article for Fulcrum, Lowell Bautista and Aries A. Arugay assert that although the Philippines’ victory of the 2016 South China Sea arbitration was rejected by China, it has nevertheless helped entrench the law of the sea as the region's principal framework for understanding and contesting maritime claims.

10 years after the South China Sea Arbitration Award, the most important question is no longer whether China complied with the ruling. It plainly did not. The more important question is whether the Award has nevertheless changed the strategic and legal landscape of the South China Sea (SCS). Increasingly, the answer is yes.

When the arbitral tribunal issued its landmark decision on 12 July 2016, many expected a decisive turning point, not only for the dispute, but also for the authority of international law in the SCS. The Award invalidated China’s expansive “historic rights” claims within its ‘nine-dash line’, clarified the status of disputed islands, rocks and low-tide elevations, and affirmed that claimants’ maritime entitlements in the SCS must derive from the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), not vague historical assertions.

Yet the decade since has exposed the limits of international adjudication when a powerful state refuses to accept an adverse ruling. China rejected the Award as “null and void” and expanded its coast guard, maritime militia and naval presence across contested waters. Dangerous confrontations involving Chinese vessels and Philippine military, coast guard and civilian vessels have become routine, particularly around Second Thomas Shoal and Scarborough Shoal. Water-cannon incidents, collisions and aggressive manoeuvres have become increasingly familiar features of maritime encounters between Chinese and Philippine vessels.