South China Sea Arbitration Tenth Anniversary: Philippines as a Hub for Ocean Governance and Regional Order Reconstruction

Reflections on a Milestone

On July 12, 2026, the Philippines will mark the tenth anniversary of the ruling on the South China Sea arbitration case. This ruling, made under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, was once hailed as a milestone in international rule of law, yet it has reached an impasse in implementation. A decade later, Manila is not dwelling on the narrative of legal victory but quietly advancing a more strategically significant layout—the establishment of the ASEAN Maritime Center in the Philippines.

This development reflects a deeper restructuring underway in global ocean governance: a shift from zero-sum legal confrontation to pragmatic multilateral collaboration. For the Philippines, an archipelago with over 7,600 islands and one of the longest coastlines in the world, the ocean is not only a lifeline for survival but also a touchstone for testing the resilience of regional order.

Five Structural Challenges

The ocean governance difficulties facing the Philippines essentially reflect a systemic crisis in the global ocean system. The five challenges listed in the original text—environmental pressure, transnational crime, climate change, institutional gaps, and the technological divide—each exceed the capacity of any single country to address.

The environmental data is alarming: over 90% of the Philippines' coral reefs are classified as poor or fair, with only 10% still retaining more than 50% live coral cover; 87% of marine fish stocks were already overfished by 2017. Behind these numbers lies a tipping point for the global marine ecosystem. Climate change presents an even more direct threat: sea levels around the Philippines are rising at a rate of 5.7 to 7 millimeters per year—nearly twice the global average—and an estimated 13.6 million people will be forced to relocate by 2100.

Transnational crime and illegal fishing pose another threat. Satellite monitoring shows that suspicious illegal fishing activities in Philippine waters increased by 9.6% and 10.5% in 2023 and 2024, respectively, with illegal fishing in municipal waters alone causing annual revenue losses of approximately $92.9 million. However, the Philippines' law enforcement capacity is constrained by shortages of patrol vessels, monitoring equipment, and personnel, making "rights on paper" difficult to translate into actual control.

On the institutional level, while the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea provides a legal framework, its enforcement mechanisms are weak. The technological divide allows developed countries to dominate marine monitoring, renewable energy, and biotechnology, leaving developing countries increasingly marginalized.

Dual-Track Strategy: The Dialectic of Law and Cooperation

Faced with these challenges, the Philippines has adopted a dual-track strategy: one track upholds legal diplomacy to safeguard marine rights based on the Convention; the other promotes pragmatic cooperation through the ASEAN platform, especially areas of converging interests with China. This strategy is not contradictory but complementary.

The original text points out that the Philippines and China have already initiated some cooperation in joint marine scientific research, fisheries protection, coast guard communication, and environmental monitoring, which are incorporated into the Bilateral Consultation Mechanism (BCM). The establishment of the ASEAN Maritime Center attempts to embed such bilateral cooperation into a multilateral framework, both avoiding being held hostage by great-power rivalries and enhancing the effectiveness of collective action.The strategic logic of this approach lies in the fact that the public good nature of marine governance means no country can stay unaffected. Even against the backdrop of unresolved sovereignty disputes, there remains significant room for cooperation in areas such as marine environmental protection, humanitarian rescue, and combating transnational crime. The responsibilities of the ASEAN Maritime Center—ensuring freedom of navigation, enhancing maritime security, and coordinating regional monitoring—precisely focus on these "low-sensitivity" issues.

ASEAN Maritime Center: From Symbol to Institution

At the 48th ASEAN Summit in May 2026, member states formally approved the establishment of the ASEAN Maritime Center, with its location in the Philippines. The political significance of this decision cannot be underestimated: it marks the first time ASEAN has a substantive maritime coordination institution, moving beyond mere declarations.

The center is positioned as a "cooperation hub rather than a confrontation platform." Its core missions include: maintaining freedom of navigation and trade flow in Southeast Asian waters (especially the South China Sea); strengthening vessel traffic monitoring and accident prevention; and integrating the action mechanisms of the 11 member states. Non-traditional security issues—such as food security, humanitarian response, and disaster prevention and mitigation—are listed as priority areas, precisely where the Philippines has the greatest needs and the most potential to contribute experience.

From a deeper structural perspective, the establishment of this center reflects the evolution of Southeast Asian regionalism: in the face of intensifying great-power competition, smaller and medium-sized countries are attempting to enhance their bargaining power through institutionalized collective action, avoiding becoming pawns on a chessboard. As the host country of the center, the Philippines not only gains geopolitical influence but also bears the demonstration responsibility of a "middle power" in marine governance.

The Potential Transformation of the Blue Economy

The effectiveness of marine governance must ultimately translate into economic and livelihood benefits. The original text cites data: the Philippine marine industry was valued at 1.01 trillion pesos in 2024, accounting for 3.8% of GDP and employing approximately 2.39 million people; the entire ASEAN marine industry has an annual output value of about $2.4 trillion. Even more striking, research shows that if joint investment between China and ASEAN in the blue economy reaches between $2 trillion and $3.7 trillion from 2020 to 2050, it could generate net benefits of $8.2 trillion to $22.8 trillion.

This economic potential provides a strong incentive for cooperation. If the ASEAN Maritime Center can serve as a platform for knowledge sharing, technology transfer, and investment coordination, the blue economy could become a new engine for regional integration. The Philippines has the opportunity to transform from a capital-importing country into a cooperation hub, attracting both Chinese capital and technology while maintaining rule-setting leadership within ASEAN.

Outlook: A Global Experimental Ground for Marine Governance

On the tenth anniversary of the South China Sea arbitration case, global marine governance stands at a crossroads. The tension between traditional great-power game logic and multilateral institutional logic is most acute in Southeast Asia. The establishment of the ASEAN Maritime Center is essentially an experiment: it attempts to rebuild a cooperative order based on shared interests on the ruins of sovereignty disputes.Whether the Philippines' dual-track strategy can succeed depends on three variables: first, the maintenance of ASEAN's internal cohesion to prevent individual member states from leaning towards unilateral dependence; second, China's tolerance for multilateral mechanisms, whether it can shift from bilateral pressure to regional cooperation; third, the improvement of the Philippines' own governance capacity to avoid institutional inertia.

There is no ultimate answer to ocean governance, but one trend is becoming increasingly clear: the maritime order of the 21st century will no longer be determined by the fleets or court rulings of a single country, but shaped by a network woven from countless nodes like the ASEAN Centre for Marine Affairs. The Philippines is trying to become a key hub in this network—not by choosing sides in disputes, but by creating options through cooperation.

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