Ten years after the arbitration ruling on the South China Sea, the dispute has settled into a pattern that the tribunal in The Hague did not anticipate: might makes right.

That is the assessment offered by The Diplomat – Asia-Pacific Current Affairs Magazine, marking the anniversary of the award issued on 12 July 2016 by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in the case brought by the Philippines against China under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). The ruling rejected Beijing's expansive claims in the South China Sea. China refused to participate in the proceedings and has refused to recognise the award ever since.

The core legal point has not changed since the tribunal issued its award. The decision stands as a binding resolution under the arbitration framework of UNCLOS, which both the Philippines and China have ratified. No appellate mechanism exists to overturn it. Yet a decade of practice has demonstrated the gap between legal validity and practical effect.

For practitioners, the anniversary piece crystallises an uncomfortable question that extends well beyond maritime disputes in Asia: what is an arbitral award worth when the losing party holds sufficient power to disregard it? The South China Sea award is binding, final, and — in territorial terms — largely unenforced. China has continued to act as though the ruling did not exist.

The Diplomat's framing — that "might makes right" now governs the waters — signals that the decisive variable over the past decade has not been the tribunal's reasoning but the regional balance of power. The Philippines won the case and lost the sea, in effect. Legal title, validated by an international tribunal, has not translated into changed behaviour on the water.

The piece lands at a moment when compliance with international courts and tribunals is under strain across multiple dockets. States increasingly weigh whether to submit to adjudication at all, knowing that enforcement depends less on the award itself than on the willingness of the prevailing party — and its partners — to impose costs for non-compliance.

For legal advisers counselling governments and investors with exposure in the region, the practical takeaway is sobering. The award remains citable authority on the law of the sea, and it continues to shape diplomatic positioning and freedom-of-navigation operations by outside powers. But any risk analysis that assumes the ruling constrains conduct in the South China Sea itself ignores ten years of contrary evidence.

The anniversary also reframes the strategic debate inside the Philippines and among UNCLOS parties more broadly. The question is no longer whether the tribunal got the law right — few serious commentators dispute the legal reasoning — but whether the Convention's dispute-resolution machinery can function when a great power simply opts out.

Ten years on, the award's legacy is double-edged. It affirmed the rule of law on paper and exposed its limits in practice. As The Diplomat's headline puts it, the operative reality in the South China Sea today is not the tribunal's reasoning but raw power — a conclusion that will shape how states, practitioners, and arbitrators approach enforcement for years to come.