A recent commentary in a Manila-based outlet portrayed the long-awaited Code of Conduct (COC) in the South China Sea as a "rare moment" of diplomacy, implying that ASEAN—under Philippine chairmanship—has finally dragged a reluctant China back to the table after years of "political limbo". It recycled familiar tropes: "China's 1992 territorial law" as the original sin, Mischief Reef as the sudden "intrusion", and ASEAN's patient persuasion finally bearing fruit.

Regrettably, this narrative inverts cause and effect, erases decades of prior incidents, and risks turning the COC into a tool of selective political pressure rather than for genuine stability.

The territorial and maritime disputes in the South China Sea did not begin with "China's 1992 law on the territorial sea". They trace back to the late 1960s and early 1970s, when Vietnam, the Philippines and Malaysia began occupying features in China's Nansha (Spratly) Islands which had long been under Chinese sovereignty.

By the 1990s, even as China and ASEAN rapidly expanded economic and diplomatic ties after the Cold War, unilateral actions by certain claimants continued: oil and gas exploration without consent, illegal arrests of Chinese fishermen, and outright military confrontations.

Consider the actual sequence of events at Mischief Reef—often cited as proof of Chinese "assertiveness". In 1994, China built modest shelters for fishermen there. The Philippine response went beyond diplomatic protest. In March 1995, Philippine forces destroyed Chinese survey markers on multiple Nansha features, attacked four Chinese fishing boats near Half Moon Shoal with air support, and detained 62 fishermen.

On May 13, 1995, Philippine vessels attempted to force their way onto Mischief Reef, leading to an eight-hour standoff with a Chinese fisheries patrol ship. China proceeded to complete the shelters.

Similar incidents followed. In April 1997, Philippine navy personnel landed on Huangyan Island (Scarborough Shoal), demolished a Chinese sovereignty marker, planted their flag, and triggered another standoff.

Throughout the late 1990s, Philippine forces repeatedly expelled, arrested and even fired upon Chinese fishing vessels in the area.

The pattern continued in 1999. On May 9, the Philippine navy deliberately ran aground an LST-57 tank landing ship on Ren'ai Reef (Second Thomas Shoal), claiming it was leaking and needed repair. The vessel never left, and personnel have been rotated there ever since. Weeks later, another obsolete warship was beached at the entrance to Huangyan Island's lagoon. Only sustained Chinese diplomatic pressure forced its removal.

These were not responses to Chinese "militarization"; they were proactive attempts to change the status quo through physical occupation.

Throughout this period, China consistently chose restraint. Beijing engaged in repeated, patient diplomacy with the Philippines and Vietnam, prioritizing overall ASEAN relations. ASEAN itself recognized the complexity of the disputes. Track-1.5 dialogues produced a clear consensus: the Nansha disputes are intricate and best managed by shelving sovereignty claims, pursuing joint development, and keeping maritime boundaries deliberately ambiguous until sovereignty is resolved.

This understanding laid the groundwork for what became the 2002 Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea (DOC). Contrary to the claim that ASEAN "finally convinced" China to recalibrate, the DOC emerged from mutual effort. The idea of a code originated in ASEAN's 1998 Hanoi Plan of Action, which called for a "code of conduct" among disputants.

China agreed in principle as a gesture of goodwill. Informal consultations began in 2000. When consensus on a legally binding "code" proved elusive—especially on scope and enforceability—Malaysia proposed in July 2002 that a non-binding political "declaration" be adopted instead.

China and ASEAN worked intensively over the following months to produce the DOC, signed in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. It was never an ASEAN-imposed document; it was a compromise reflecting the "East Asian spirit" of consultation and mutual comfort.

The COC now under discussion is not a fresh start or a sudden "golden opportunity". It is explicitly the next step envisioned in the DOC itself—the "code" that the 2002 declaration committed parties to pursue.

Any future COC must therefore be judged against the DOC's coordinate system: mutual respect, consensus and shelving disputes. It cannot legitimize illegal occupations, such as the continued Philippine presence on Ren'ai Reef. It cannot selectively constrain one side while ignoring the other.

Under the long-endorsed "dual-track" approach, sovereignty issues remain for direct bilateral negotiation; regional stability is a shared China-ASEAN responsibility.

Equally important, the COC should be grounded in the full spirit of international law—beginning with the UN Charter's principles of sovereign equality and peaceful settlement—not solely UNCLOS, which addresses maritime zones only after sovereignty is established.

Post-war international order restored Chinese sovereignty over islands in the South China Sea; any serious framework must respect that historical reality rather than treat it as negotiable.

Above all, the COC must apply equally to all parties. The habit of attributing every flare-up solely to China, while portraying the code as a "restraint on Beijing", reveals either historical amnesia or bias.

If the COC is eventually legally binding, it must bind all signatories without double standards. If it remains political, it must address every country's legitimate concerns—including China's. Importing the 2016 arbitral award, which China has consistently rejected as invalid, would doom the process before it begins.

As China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi stated recently, the time has come to conclude the COC on the basis of the DOC, without external interference. For that to happen, all parties—especially the current ASEAN chair—must approach the talks with intellectual honesty.

Selective memory and one-sided narratives may score domestic points, but they will not produce a durable, equitable code.

True hope for the South China Sea lies in returning to facts, not fiction.

Ding Duo is the director of the Center for International and Regional Studies, National Institute for South China Sea Studies.

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