Manila Wants One Table for the Whole Bloc. Beijing Keeps Setting Two Chairs.
Every reset in the South China Sea Code of Conduct talks costs Zambales and Palawan crews the days they can't recover, while the summit clock runs out.
Beijing wants to negotiate the sea one capital at a time. Manila wants a single binding text that ASEAN signs with China as a bloc. That gap has kept the Code of Conduct in the South China Sea stuck for more than two decades, and the 2026 ASEAN Summit is unlikely to close it.
The design of the standoff matters because it decides who holds leverage. A bilateral table pits the Philippines against China alone, where size settles most arguments. A multilateral text forces China to answer to all ten ASEAN members at once, so the smaller states gain cover they cannot get on their own.
Why the wording is the whole fight
The sea has six claimants: China, Taiwan, Vietnam, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Brunei. The Code, though, is being hammered out between China and the 10-member ASEAN bloc, which folds in states with no claim at all and their own reasons to keep Beijing happy.
ASEAN and China signed a Declaration on Conduct back in 2002, and it committed everyone to self-restraint without binding anyone to anything. The follow-up Code was meant to add teeth. Since then, negotiators have argued over three questions that never resolve: whether the text is legally binding, whether it covers disputed features already occupied, and whether outside navies can still transit.
Manila pushes for language anchored to the 2016 arbitral ruling that rejected China's expansive claim. Beijing treats that ruling as void and prefers case-by-case deals with Vietnam, Malaysia, and the Philippines separately. Every time a draft moves toward binding multilateral commitments, the framing snaps back to bilateral consultation, and the clock restarts.
The reset lands on a fishing boat
For crews out of Masinloc and Subic in Zambales, and for the municipal fishers working the waters off Palawan, a stalled Code is not an abstraction. It shows up as a lost trip. When Chinese Coast Guard vessels shadow the boats near Bajo de Masinloc, or water cannons force a retreat, the catch that was supposed to cover fuel, ice, and the crew's share simply doesn't come home.
Fisherfolk groups have documented these interruptions for years: blocked access to traditional grounds, longer detours to safer but thinner waters, and rising fuel costs eating whatever's left. A young deckhand doesn't get a briefing on which negotiating round collapsed. He gets a shorter payday, and sometimes a day where the boat stays tied up because the risk isn't worth it.
ASEAN's own split does the rest
The bloc cannot present a united front because its members don't share one. Vietnam, Malaysia, and Brunei carry their own claims and their own quiet arrangements with Beijing over joint development, so a table that suits Hanoi's oil blocks does not automatically serve Zambales fishers. Cambodia and Laos, both deep in Chinese financing and with no stake in these waters, have historically softened bloc statements on the sea.
That fragmentation is exactly what a bilateral approach rewards. As long as each claimant can be pulled aside for a separate deal, the multilateral text stays a draft, and food security for the communities that actually eat from these waters stays hostage to a negotiation they have no seat at.
A summit photo will get taken. A joint communiqué will use the word progress. And the next time a Masinloc crew radios that a foreign hull is blocking the approach, no clause will exist to cite, because the text meant to protect them is still being argued over one capital at a time.
