The Code of Conduct Draft Leaves Out the Reef Where the Water Cannon Hit His Banca

The Philippines holds the ASEAN chair through the end of 2026, and the handoff is coming. Somewhere off Palawan, a young fisher reads the new Code of Conduct draft the way anyone reads a document that decides their income. He looks for the reef where a China Coast Guard vessel opened its water cannon on his banca last dry season. The reef is not there.

That absence is the whole story. A Code of Conduct is supposed to set rules for the South China Sea, so the water where a fishing boat gets hit is exactly the water it should cover. When the draft skips that patch, the omission does more work than any clause on the page, because a rule that avoids the contested spot leaves the contested spot to whoever shows up with the bigger hull.

What the draft protects and what it leaves open

ASEAN has been negotiating this document with China for years, and the pace tells you who benefits from delay. Every dry season the draft stays unfinished, Chinese vessels keep patrolling reefs Filipino fishers have worked for generations, and the fisher keeps calculating whether the catch is worth the fuel and the risk of another spray. Beijing sets that math by staying at the table while its coast guard stays on the water.

This is not only Beijing's doing. The bloc runs on consensus, so a single member with close economic ties to China can soften language. Manila made the South China Sea a central push this year, pledging to conclude a legally binding Code of Conduct by the end of its term, and by mid-year analysts described that push as stalled. At the ASEAN foreign ministers' meeting in Manila, the South China Sea was argued over hard, and Manila could not forge a new consensus. Filipino fishers watched their government host the room while the water that feeds them stayed unresolved.

The reef is his grocery, not his geopolitics

Frame it from the banca and the stakes get concrete. That reef is where the fish are, which means it is rent money, tuition, the diesel advance he has to pay back whether or not he lands a catch. When the draft leaves a contested reef out, it leaves his access unprotected, and an unprotected fishing ground is one where he either backs off or gambles on the water cannon not coming this trip.

Filipino fisherfolk groups have said for years that patrols and harassment near contested reefs cut their catch and push them into deeper, more dangerous waters. Those are not abstract complaints. They are shorter trips, lighter hauls, and boats that stay tied up on days the risk reads too high.

A finished Code of Conduct would not automatically fix any of this, because a signed document is not the same as ships leaving the water. But a draft that quietly leaves out the kind of reef where a Filipino boat took the spray is telling that fisher what the bloc has decided his fishing ground is worth at the negotiating table.

He still has to go out this dry season. The fuel comes due, the buyer wants the catch, and the reef the draft forgot is the one that pays. The water cannon is a maybe. The debt is not.