Manila’s Biggest Diplomatic Bet Is Running Out of Time
The Philippines chairs ASEAN in 2026 with a bold promise on the South China Sea. The fishermen of Masinloc are still waiting.
On a clear morning off the coast of Zambales, the silhouette of Scarborough Shoal sits at the edge of the horizon like a rumour, close enough to see, impossible to reach. The fishermen of Masinloc know this better than anyone. Their families have worked these waters for generations. Now, they say, Chinese vessels are present around the clock, a permanent blockade dressed up as a patrol, keeping them from fishing grounds roughly 30 nautical miles from their own shore.
That detail matters right now, in early 2026, because President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. has staked a considerable portion of his foreign policy legacy on changing it.
The Promise Manila Made to ASEAN
The Philippines assumed the ASEAN chairmanship in late 2025 under the theme “Navigating Our Future, Together,” and Marcos wasted no time framing his ambitions. The South China Sea Code of Conduct, which has lived on ASEAN’s agenda since 2002 and entered formal negotiations in 2018, would be his signature achievement. He said the chairmanship was a chance to get the COC “agreed upon, signed, and delivered.” The target date set is July 2026.
On paper, the ambition reads well. A legally binding code governing conduct in the South China Sea would represent one of the most consequential multilateral agreements in the region’s modern history. It would, in theory, reduce the risk of miscalculation between claimant states, establish clear protocols for vessels operating in disputed waters, and give smaller nations some structural protection against coercion from larger ones.
Foreign Secretary Theresa Lazaro has pushed the diplomatic machinery hard, working to build consensus among ASEAN members while managing the delicate choreography of keeping Beijing at the table. Chinese Premier Li Qiang has shown up when called upon, offering language of cooperation while making little movement on the questions that actually matter.
What the Analysts Say When the Cameras Are Off
Independent assessments from institutions including CSIS and Chatham House land in much the same place: a binding agreement by July 2026 is not happening. The optimism coming from Marcos is being read by most regional analysts as a stated position, not a projection.
A binding code that China will not sign is equally useless.
The reasons are structural, and they have not changed much since the early 2000s. Three milestone disputes remain unresolved. First is the question of geographic scope: China wants a narrower definition that would exclude areas it occupies; the other claimants want the opposite. Second is how any new code relates to the 2002 Declaration on the Conduct of Parties, which was aspirational and non-binding and which China has treated as a ceiling rather than a floor. Third, and most critically, is enforcement. A code without binding legal force is a document. A binding code that China will not sign is equally useless.
The overlap of claimant interests adds further complication. The Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, and Brunei all have overlapping claims in the West Philippine Sea. Taiwan, which no ASEAN member can formally acknowledge as a party to these negotiations, also sits in the picture. Getting all of these interests aligned while simultaneously managing Chinese pressure is less a diplomatic challenge than a structural impossibility on the current timeline.
The 2016 arbitral award, which invalidated China’s sweeping nine-dash-line claims under international law, remains unrecognised by Beijing and therefore functionally shelved in any official negotiation context.
Scarborough and the Politics of Symbolism
Marcos raised Scarborough Shoal at the East Asia Summit in pointed terms, stating that the shoal “has long been part of Philippine territory” and condemning China’s 2024 declaration of a “national nature reserve” there as a direct violation of Philippine sovereignty. It was diplomatically sharp language. China, which has controlled the shoal since 2012, responded with its standard formula of dismissal.
The exchange illustrated something important about where Manila’s real leverage lies. Diplomatic statements at multilateral forums are one instrument. The more substantial security architecture the Philippines has been building runs through its minilateral defence relationships with the United States, Japan, and Australia. Enhanced access agreements, joint patrols in the West Philippine Sea, and intelligence-sharing arrangements have done more in concrete terms to complicate Chinese manoeuvring than any progress made at the COC negotiating table.
That is not a criticism of the chairmanship strategy so much as a description of how smaller states manage asymmetric situations. The COC process matters as a norm-setting exercise and as a test of ASEAN’s institutional coherence. But the daily security calculus runs through Washington, Tokyo, and Canberra as much as it does through Jakarta or Beijing.
What Masinloc Tells You About the Gap Between Policy and Reality
Back in Zambales, the fishermen’s perspective on all of this is direct. A community leader in Masinloc put it plainly: Filipino fishermen “can’t enter the shoal” because Chinese ships are there constantly. No draft text, no confidence-building mechanism, no milestone communique changes that on the water. It has not changed since 2012. The gap between what is being negotiated in formal settings and what is lived along the Philippine coast is not a gap that a chairmanship year can close.
No draft text, no confidence-building mechanism, no milestone communique changes that on the water.
That said, incremental progress is possible and worth distinguishing from transformative progress. Analysts see a realistic 2026 outcome as a consolidated draft text, some movement on crisis-communication mechanisms, and the establishment of a cleaner negotiating framework that the next ASEAN chair, Singapore, could inherit and build on. Singapore’s reputation for methodical diplomacy and its relationships with both Washington and Beijing make it a potentially more frictionless host for the harder conversations.
A Chairmanship’s Real Measure
There is a version of this story where Manila’s 2026 chairmanship is judged a failure because the binding COC was never delivered. That framing is probably too harsh, and it sets a standard that no one in the analyst community thought was realistic to begin with.
The more honest measure is whether the Philippines used its position to advance the architecture. Whether it kept ASEAN’s internal coherence intact while managing Chinese pressure. Whether it consolidated enough draft language and built enough goodwill to hand Singapore something workable rather than a tangle of unresolved positions.
On those grounds, the jury is still out. But the fishermen of Masinloc are not waiting for the jury. They have been waiting since 2012, and the horizon still looks the same.
The South China Sea Code of Conduct negotiations and the Philippines’ ASEAN chairmanship will continue to shape regional security conversations through 2026 and beyond. Asia Lifestyle Magazine will continue tracking developments across Southeast Asia’s most consequential diplomatic and cultural frontlines.
