On July 12, 2016, an arbitration tribunal in The Hague ruled that China's claims over nearly the entire South China Sea had no legal basis. Ten years later, on that same anniversary, Philippine fisherman Henrilito Empoc — now 47 years old — still cannot return to Scarborough Shoal to fish as his ancestors had for generations. He has not ventured into this area since 2022, daring only to fish closer to shore. The gap between legal text and on-the-ground reality is the core story of a decade after the ruling: the Philippines won decisively on paper, but that ruling came with no enforcement mechanism whatsoever, and China has exploited precisely that loophole to render the legal victory meaningless on the water.
This is not a random failure of international law. It is a predictable outcome rooted in the very design of the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS): the convention has binding arbitration, but no international coast guard to enforce verdicts. According to VnExpress, the 2016 ruling is final and legally binding on the parties involved — but the same source also acknowledges that the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) has no enforcement mechanism. That is precisely the safety valve that Beijing has thoroughly exploited over the past decade.
A legal ruling creates legitimacy, but military presence creates consequences — and these are two entirely different things.
The 'Four Noes' Strategy Turned a Binding Verdict into Worthless Paper
From the start, China chose outright denial. According to analysis by The Diplomat, Beijing applied a policy the magazine calls the 'Four Noes': do not acknowledge, do not participate, do not recognize, and do not enforce the ruling. This policy was not merely formal diplomatic posturing — it was a calculated strategic choice that allowed China to ignore international law while avoiding direct military confrontation with a superpower like the United States. According to the Associated Press, on July 12, 2016 — the very day the ruling was announced — China's Foreign Ministry declared the verdict null and non-binding, a position Beijing has maintained unchanged to this day.
What is more remarkable is how China adjusted its legal language over time without changing the substance of its claims. The Diplomat notes that since 2016, Beijing has gradually stopped invoking the 'nine-dash line' — a concept directly rejected by the ruling — and shifted to emphasizing the 'Four Sha' doctrine, another name for the same territorial ambition but phrased more ambiguously to evade direct legal attack. This is a form of 'repackaging' claims: the actual content remains unchanged, only the legal label is refreshed to avoid being directly contradicted by what the ruling already rejected.
From Legal Text to Water Cannons: Physical Control Replaces Law
If diplomatic language is the veneer, then on-the-ground control is the substance. China has maintained de facto control over Scarborough Shoal since 2012 — four years before the ruling was issued — showing that the verdict never had a chance to alter the power balance in the very region it addressed most. According to the BBC, Chinese vessels regularly employ water cannons to chase away Philippine fishing boats, and Chinese crews have even cut anchor lines to force fishermen to leave. Another fisherman, Rony Drio, 59, says he has not returned to the area since 2024.
The level of confrontation extends beyond fishing disputes. In June 2024, a Philippine sailor lost a finger in a violent collision with Chinese coast guard forces while resupplying a stranded Philippine naval vessel at Second Thomas Shoal — an incident demonstrating escalation from harassing fishermen to direct clashes between state forces. More recently, in April 2026, Philippine security officials released images of a square floating structure with central antenna that they alleged was constructed by China at Scarborough. On June 10, 2026, the Philippines demanded China dismantle the structure and declared it would not allow the shoal to become artificial island; China subsequently removed the structure, according to Reuters as reported by the BBC. But just three weeks later, on June 30, 2026, Chinese naval and coast guard forces conducted large-scale patrols around Scarborough — a move occurring right after a joint U.S.-Philippines military exercise near the area, suggesting that each small concession by Beijing is accompanied by a show of force to compensate.
The Ruling Still Has Value — But Not Where Everyone Expects
What many commentaries overlook is that the 2016 ruling is far from useless — it is only useless precisely where public attention is most focused. The Diplomat points out that the verdict's greatest contribution was clarifying Article 121, paragraph 3 of UNCLOS: only features naturally capable of sustaining human habitation or independent economic life are entitled to exclusive economic zones and continental shelf rights; other features get only 12 nautical miles of territorial sea. This is a legal standard that several regional countries have quietly used to solidify their own positions without needing to re-litigate from scratch. The Philippines codified this principle into the Maritime Zone Act of 2024. Indonesia used reasoning from the ruling to reject China's vague claims of 'historical rights'. Malaysia, in a submission to the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf in December 2019, defined an extended continental shelf based on a baseline from mainland coast following the proper UNCLOS framework.
Vietnam falls into this group too, but chose a far more cautious approach than Manila. Hanoi submitted a statement of position to the arbitration tribunal in December 2014, and subsequently applied the ruling's legal principles in diplomatic notes to the United Nations during 2019 to 2020, particularly the principle that submerged features above water only at high tide cannot be subject to sovereignty claims. Precisely on July 12, 2026, Vietnamese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Phạm Thu Hằng issued a statement emphasizing that UNCLOS is the sole legal basis governing maritime rights comprehensively, and disputes must be settled peacefully. This is cautious diplomatic language that avoids naming China directly — reflecting Hanoi's difficult position: it wants to rely on international law to protect its South China Sea interests while maintaining stable economic and political relations with Beijing, its northern neighbor with the greatest influence on Vietnam's economy.
The 14-Nation Alliance and the Real Limits of International Pressure
On July 12, 2026, the United States, Britain, the Philippines, and 11 other nations — including Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Germany, Italy, and a host of Baltic and Eastern European countries — issued a joint statement reaffirming that China's South China Sea claims are illegal under the 2016 ruling, according to the Associated Press. The statement opposed the use of maritime militia, military and civilian forces to harass and obstruct the lawful activities of other nations at sea and in the air. The European Union also issued its own statement, calling the ruling a milestone in peaceful dispute resolution.
But this reveals the crux of the entire mechanism's limitation: a joint statement from 14 nations, however politically weighty, remains just words — it carries no binding force and no specific sanctions. China has consistently ignored precisely this type of statement for the past decade. The only thing that actually changes on-the-ground behavior, though limitedly, is direct military presence — joint U.S.-Philippines exercises, or Washington's repeated reminders that its treaty defense obligation to Manila applies if Philippine forces come under armed attack in disputed waters. In other words, the legal ruling creates legitimacy, but military presence creates consequences — and these are two entirely different things.
Amidst these tensions, a parallel channel exists that receives little attention: according to rfi.fr, the Philippine Foreign Ministry announced in late March 2026 that Manila and Beijing had resumed negotiations on South China Sea disputes, seeking to stabilize bilateral relations. The parallel between maritime confrontation and diplomatic negotiation is not a contradiction — it is Beijing's familiar tactic: apply maximum physical pressure while keeping a negotiation door open to avoid appearing to initiate full-scale conflict.
Why This Story Matters Beyond Manila
For Vietnamese communities in the United States, especially families with roots in central coastal provinces where fishing once was the main livelihood, the story of Philippine fishermen being chased from Scarborough echoes exactly what Vietnamese fishermen have experienced and continue experiencing in the Paracel Islands and some Spratly areas — the same water cannon tactic, the same pattern of civilian vessels being pressured by coast guard ships with far greater tonnage. The biggest difference is the level of publicity: Manila chose to release images, take the case to international courts and leverage Western media maximally, while Hanoi handled similar collisions through quiet diplomatic channels, rarely disclosing details. For Vietnamese businesses and investors with two-way trade relations with China, prolonged South China Sea instability means higher supply chain risk and maritime insurance costs — invisible expenses quietly factored into regional shipping and insurance premiums but rarely seen by end consumers.
Conclusion: International Law Wins on Paper, But Whoever Controls the Sea Controls Reality
Ten years after the ruling, the clearest lesson is not that international law is worthless, but rather that it only has value where nations actively and persistently apply it — as the Philippines did by codifying the ruling's principles into domestic law, or as Indonesia and Malaysia did in using it to reject vague claims. At Scarborough, where China established physical control before the verdict was even issued, international law has proven insufficient to reverse a reality established by force. In the next decade, circumstances will likely remain substantially unchanged unless a major shock occurs — a collision causing serious casualties, or direct U.S. military intervention beyond exercises. Until then, joint statements, arbitration rulings, and bilateral talks will continue running parallel to water cannons and severed anchor lines — two parallel worlds whose distance apart measures the true nature of power over the South China Sea today.
Read the original reports at the source links below.