The Stratbase Brief is a monthly analysis of issues beyond the news cycle. It provides critical context for understanding the various issues and developments shaping the Philippine political, economic, and business environment.
This month’s Stratbase Brief features insights from Stratbase Non-Resident Fellow Dr. Benjamin Blandin. Dr. Blandin is a French political scientist and maritime security expert. He holds a Ph.D. in Political Science (2025, Paris Catholic University), along with master’s degrees in geopolitics, geostrategy, and strategy consulting. Dr. Blandin is also a graduate of the French War College (IHEDN) and the French Naval Institute (CESM), and an alumnus of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) Summer Academy.
Introduction
For more than five decades, China has progressively expanded its maritime presence and coercive activities across the South China Sea and, more broadly, the First Island Chain. From the seizure of the Paracel Islands in 1974[1] and the confrontation at Johnson South Reef in 1988[2] to the Scarborough Shoal standoff,[3] the rejection of the 2016 South China Sea arbitral award, and increasingly assertive grey-zone operations, these episodes have generated extensive legal and strategic scholarship. Yet they are generally examined as discrete territorial disputes, individual confrontations, or controversies surrounding particular provisions of international law. This fragmented approach risks obscuring a broader question: to what extent does China’s maritime conduct constitute a sustained and increasingly institutionalised pattern of non-compliance with the international maritime legal order?
The issue extends well beyond compliance with the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). Over several decades, China has become party to, endorsed, or participated in an extensive architecture of treaties, political commitments, confidence-building arrangements and crisis-management mechanisms governing maritime behaviour. These include the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, UNCLOS, COLREG, SOLAS, the 2002 Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea (DOC), the Code for Unplanned Encounters at Sea (CUES), regional guidelines for maritime encounters, bilateral agreements, hotlines and consultation mechanisms. Yet recurrent confrontations raise questions not only about compliance with individual instruments, but also about the cumulative effectiveness of this architecture.
Drawing on an original database documenting maritime and aerial incidents since 1974 and a taxonomy of more than 230 means of asymmetric warfare employed by Chinese state and state-affiliated actors, this article examines the evolution of Chinese coercion in frequency, regularity, duration, aggressiveness and diversity, and confronts this operational record with China’s legal obligations, political commitments, unilateral assurances and crisis-management mechanisms. It ultimately asks whether the resulting pattern warrants moving analytically from the notion of a repeat offender to that of an “international maritime outlaw”—not as a rhetorical or formal legal category, but as a threshold concept assessed through five characteristics: recurrence, escalation, cross-domain breadth, institutionalisation, and resistance to corrective mechanisms.
From Legal Commitments to a Pattern of Non-Compliance
Assessing China’s maritime conduct requires looking beyond individual incidents and beyond UNCLOS alone. Over the past five decades, Beijing has embedded itself within an increasingly dense architecture of international, regional and bilateral rules governing maritime behaviour. China is party to the United Nations Charter, UNCLOS and the International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea (COLREG), while also endorsing instruments such as the 2002 Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea (DOC), the Code for Unplanned Encounters at Sea (CUES),[4] regional guidelines for maritime encounters, and numerous bilateral agreements and crisis-management mechanisms. These instruments differ considerably in legal status and scope, but collectively establish obligations or commitments concerning peaceful dispute settlement, navigational safety, restraint, de-escalation and the management of maritime confrontations.
The evolution of Chinese maritime and aerial coercion, however, contrasts sharply with the progressive expansion of this normative architecture. The original incident database assembled for this study reveals a parallel and opposite trajectory. Over time, confrontations have increased in number and regularity, become more sustained in duration and more aggressive in character, and involved an expanding portfolio of means of coercion. These range from shadowing, blocking and exclusion orders to dangerous manoeuvres, ramming, water-cannoning, laser illumination, radar locking and other forms of physical or electronic harassment. The trend is therefore not simply quantitative. It reflects the progressive routinisation, diversification and escalation of coercion, involving an increasingly broad combination of military, coast guard, maritime militia and other state-affiliated actors.
This evolution directly intersects with China’s legal and political commitments. Dangerous manoeuvres and collision risks engage navigational rules, while military encounters are also addressed by CUES and related maritime-encounter arrangements. More broadly, the use of coercive measures to alter disputed situations sits uneasily with repeated commitments under the DOC and bilateral agreements to exercise restraint, avoid complicating disputes and manage disagreements peacefully.[5] The 2016 Arbitral Tribunal provided a particularly clear example when it found that Chinese law-enforcement vessels at Scarborough Shoal had created serious collision risks and violated several provisions of the COLREG.[6] The significance of the incident database is that it places such findings within a much longer behavioural continuum: coercive practices did not disappear following the adoption of additional confidence-building arrangements but became increasingly recurrent and diversified.
The same contradiction is visible at the level of territorial and jurisdictional consolidation. China used force to seize the remaining Paracel Islands in 1974 and at Johnson South Reef in 1988, subsequently consolidated positions on disputed features, took effective control of Scarborough Shoal in 2012, and transformed several Spratly features through large-scale reclamation and militarisation. At Mischief Reef, the Tribunal found that China had constructed installations and artificial islands without Philippine authorization in an area within the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone and continental shelf.[7] More recent and increasingly persistent deployments of coast guard and maritime militia vessels have extended this logic beyond permanently occupied installations, allowing China to assert forms of de facto control or jurisdiction through sustained physical presence.
The central issue is consequently not whether every Chinese action constitutes an internationally wrongful act, nor whether every political or confidence-building instrument creates a binding legal obligation. It is the cumulative relationship between commitments and subsequent behaviour. As the architecture intended to regulate encounters, restrain coercion and manage disputes has expanded, Chinese coercive activity has simultaneously become more frequent, regular, sustained, aggressive and diverse. The resulting pattern is therefore characterized not merely by recurrence, but by increasing regularity, escalation, diversification and persistence despite the multiplication of mechanisms intended to constrain it. This widening gap between formal commitment and observable conduct provides the first indication that China’s behaviour may represent more than recurrent non-compliance.
From Non-Compliance to the Instrumentalization of the Maritime Legal Order
The discrepancy between commitment and conduct is particularly visible in relation to the maritime status quo. The 2002 Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea (DOC) committed its parties to exercise self-restraint and refrain from activities that would complicate or escalate disputes, while successive China–Philippines joint statements and agreements similarly emphasized peaceful dispute management, confidence building and restraint. Yet the subsequent operational record points toward progressive consolidation rather than restraint: the transformation of Mischief Reef into a permanent Chinese outpost, effective control of Scarborough Shoal from 2012, and recurrent or sustained concentrations of Chinese maritime militia and coast guard vessels around Whitsun Reef, Eldad Reef, Iroquois Reef and Sabina Shoal.[8] These cases differ in their legal and territorial circumstances, but collectively demonstrate how physical presence, exclusion and persistent deployment have continued to alter conditions on the water despite repeated commitments intended to prevent unilateral actions from further complicating disputes.
More specific assurances provide an even clearer basis for comparison. At Fiery Cross Reef, China presented the construction of an oceanographic station through UNESCO’s Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission process as an internationally endorsed scientific project. Yet a joint State Council–Central Military Commission directive of 6 November 1987[9] explicitly described the station as “a major measure for safeguarding our country’s territorial sovereignty,” required it to be permanently manned and authorized self-defence weapons. At Mischief Reef, Chinese officials, including Wang Yi, repeatedly characterized the structures discovered in 1995 as “fishermen shelters”, “civilian infrastructure” or “research stations”;[10] these subsequently developed into one of China’s largest artificial islands and military installations in the Spratlys. A comparable contradiction emerged after Xi Jinping’s pledge[11] at the White House in September 2015. These cases do not require assumptions about intent: in each instance, subsequent observable conduct materially contradicted the purpose or restraint previously presented by Beijing.
A third discrepancy concerns rules and arrangements governing behaviour during encounters at sea and in the air. China is bound by navigational obligations under the COLREG and has endorsed CUES and other regional guidelines intended to reduce the risks associated with maritime and aerial encounters, although their legal status and fields of application differ. The operational record nevertheless contains repeated dangerous manoeuvres, collision risks, ramming, water-cannoning, laser illumination, unsafe interceptions, radar locking and other coercive practices. The 2016 Arbitral Tribunal established one direct legal connection when it found that Chinese law-enforcement vessels at Scarborough Shoal had created serious collision risks in violation of several COLREG provisions. Other incidents must be assessed against the specific scope of the applicable instrument, particularly because CUES does not govern every encounter involving coast guard or maritime militia vessels. The broader pattern remains significant: mechanisms intended to promote safe and restrained encounters have developed alongside an increasingly diverse and aggressive repertoire of coercive practices.
The incident database also provides a means of assessing the practical effectiveness of crisis-management mechanisms. China has established bilateral consultation mechanisms, hotlines, direct communication channels and other arrangements intended to prevent incidents,[12] facilitate communication and manage escalation. Yet across the period covered by the database, Chinese maritime and aerial coercion has become more frequent and regular, increasingly sustained in duration, more aggressive in character and more diverse in the means employed. The recurrence of confrontations does not establish that these mechanisms were never activated, but it demonstrates that their multiplication has failed to produce sustained behavioural restraint. This distinction matters: the evidentiary claim is not that every mechanism was systematically ignored, but that the institutional architecture created to manage confrontation has demonstrably failed to reverse the underlying trajectory of coercive behaviour.
The resulting pattern therefore operates across instruments of very different legal and political character. Binding obligations can be violated; political commitments can be followed by conduct incompatible with the restraint they prescribe; specific assurances can be contradicted by subsequent actions; and crisis-management mechanisms can coexist with an intensification of the behaviour they are intended to contain. These categories should not be legally conflated. Their analytical significance lies precisely in their convergence. Across treaties, political declarations, unilateral assurances and confidence-building mechanisms, the same underlying discrepancy repeatedly emerges between formal commitment and subsequent conduct. It is the persistence of that discrepancy across independent layers of the maritime order—not the indiscriminate characterization of every Chinese action as a legal violation—that provides evidence of a broader and increasingly institutionalised pattern of non-compliance.
From Rule-Shaping to an Alternative Maritime Order
The gap between commitments and conduct is reinforced by a second process: the progressive construction of a domestic legal and administrative framework through which China treats contested maritime claims as established jurisdiction. Legislation governing the China Coast Guard, maritime traffic safety, fisheries and related activities has expanded the enforcement powers claimed by Chinese authorities at sea, including inspection, exclusion and coercive measures.[13] The issue is not China’s adoption of domestic maritime legislation per se, but its application to maritime spaces where Chinese jurisdiction is contested or exceeds the entitlements recognized under UNCLOS. International disputes are thereby progressively reframed as matters of domestic law enforcement.
Administrative measures extend this process beyond legislation. China has incorporated disputed maritime spaces into domestic governance structures, established administrative districts encompassing contested islands and waters,[14]issued fishing bans extending into other States’ exclusive economic zones,[15] assigned Chinese names to disputed maritime features,[16] and imposed authorization or reporting requirements on foreign activities.[17] Such measures create an administrative representation of the South China Sea in which the underlying sovereignty and jurisdictional disputes largely disappear: areas contested internationally are governed domestically as though Chinese authority were already established. This administrative incorporation provides a framework within which subsequent enforcement can be portrayed not as coercion against another claimant, but as the routine exercise of Chinese jurisdiction.
Operational practices then give physical effect to these normative and administrative claims. Persistent China Coast Guard patrols and maritime militia deployments can enforce exclusion, interfere with fishing or resource activities, challenge foreign vessels and maintain prolonged presence around disputed features without requiring conventional military occupation. This interaction is particularly important at locations where Chinese vessels repeatedly return or remain for extended periods. A claim can thus be codified in domestic law, incorporated into administrative practice, and physically enforced by state or state-affiliated actors. Repetition adds a temporal dimension: what begins as a contested assertion can progressively acquire the appearance of normal jurisdiction through sustained enforcement and the creation of facts on the water.
This process is complemented by efforts to shape the international legal and institutional environment itself. Beijing has continued to invoke historic rights and sovereignty-based arguments while advancing interpretations concerning archipelagic baselines, offshore archipelagos, [18] continental States’ outlying island groups and the legal status of maritime features. [19] At the institutional level, China has maintained representation on the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) since its establishment, promoted Xiamen as the future seat of the BBNJ Agreement Secretariat, and spearheaded the creation of the International Organization for Mediation (IOMed), headquartered in Hong Kong. Rather than withdrawing from the existing international legal order, China therefore combines participation in its institutions with efforts to shape their interpretation, geographical distribution and, increasingly, the institutional architecture itself.
The result is qualitatively different from simple rule-breaking. China is not merely departing from individual obligations or commitments; it is progressively developing and enforcing a competing normative and administrative order in contested maritime spaces. The sequence is cumulative: claim, legal codification, administrative incorporation, physical enforcement, repetition and normalization. This helps explain why the pattern identified in the preceding sections has proved so resistant to legal decisions, diplomatic commitments and crisis-management mechanisms. The challenge to the international maritime legal order therefore lies not only in China’s violations or broken commitments, but in its growing capacity to translate contested claims into an alternative system of rules and practices that it can enforce on the water.
From Repeat Offender to International Maritime Outlaw
Taken individually, the behaviours examined above are insufficient to characterize a State as an “international maritime outlaw.” States violate treaties, advance contested interpretations of international law, disregard political commitments and resist adverse legal decisions without thereby placing themselves outside the international order. China itself remains deeply embedded within that order and continues to invoke UNCLOS and other international instruments when they support its positions. The relevant question is therefore not whether China complies with international maritime law in every instance, but whether the scale, persistence and organization of its departures from the existing order have crossed a threshold beyond ordinary or episodic non-compliance.
The evidence examined in this article suggests that this threshold can be assessed through several mutually reinforcing characteristics. The first is recurrence: problematic conduct extends across decades rather than representing isolated episodes. The second is escalation: the incident record indicates increasing frequency, regularity, duration, aggressiveness and diversity of coercive means. The third is cross-domain breadth: the pattern encompasses navigational safety, maritime entitlements, dispute settlement, political commitments, confidence-building arrangements and the physical alteration of disputed features. The fourth is institutionalisation: contested claims are increasingly supported by domestic legislation, administrative structures, coast guard deployments, maritime militia operations and official legal narratives. Finally, there is resistance to corrective mechanisms: diplomatic agreements, crisis-management arrangements and the binding 2016 Award have not produced sustained behavioural restraint. These characteristics distinguish repeated rule-breaking from a durable pattern embedded within State policy.
Their cumulative character is critical. The evidence does not reveal merely more incidents, more violations or more expansive claims. It shows mutually reinforcing processes: commitments to restraint coexist with increasingly coercive behaviour; specific assurances are contradicted by subsequent actions; adverse legal findings are rejected or circumvented; contested claims are incorporated into domestic law and administration; and these claims are then enforced through persistent physical presence. The interaction between these processes allows strategic gains achieved through coercion to be consolidated and normalized despite continuing legal contestation. The progression is therefore not simply from compliance to non-compliance, but from episodic departures from established rules toward a sustained capacity to resist their constraining effects.
“International maritime outlaw” can consequently be understood as a threshold analytical concept, rather than a formal legal category or rhetorical designation. It describes a State whose recurrent and escalating non-compliance extends across multiple components of the maritime order, is embedded within State policy, persists despite mechanisms intended to correct or constrain it, and is accompanied by efforts to impose competing rules and jurisdictional practices. This definition deliberately sets a higher threshold than that of a repeat offender: frequency alone is insufficient. What matters is the convergence of recurrence, escalation, breadth, institutionalisation and resistance to correction.
Measured against these criteria, China’s trajectory increasingly fits the proposed category. The conclusion does not rest on any single violation, disputed reef, broken assurance or confrontation, but on their convergence across five decades and across distinct layers of maritime governance. China has not withdrawn from the international maritime order; more consequentially, it has demonstrated an increasing capacity to remain within that order while selectively disregarding its constraints, neutralizing mechanisms intended to enforce restraint, and consolidating an alternative set of rules and practices where existing law conflicts with its objectives. It is this combination—not simply China’s record as a frequent violator—that supports the analytical progression from repeat offender to international maritime outlaw.
Conclusion
Chinese maritime actors’ behaviour over the past five decades reveals more than a succession of isolated disputes or occasional violations of international law. The evidence examined here shows a convergence between two trajectories: while the legal, political and institutional architecture intended to regulate maritime conduct, including unprofessional and dangerous behaviour at sea, has progressively expanded, Chinese coercive activity has become more frequent, regular, sustained, aggressive and diverse. This operational evolution has been accompanied by repeated discrepancies between commitments and subsequent conduct, resistance to adverse legal outcomes, and the progressive translation of contested claims into domestic legislation, administrative practices and physical enforcement. These mutually reinforcing processes distinguish the pattern identified in this article from episodic non-compliance.
The notion of an “international maritime outlaw” captures this cumulative pattern without suggesting that China operates entirely outside international law. Rather, China increasingly meets the five characteristics proposed in this article: recurrence, escalation, cross-domain breadth, institutionalisation and resistance to corrective mechanisms. Its trajectory from repeat offender to maritime outlaw therefore rests not on the sheer number of violations committed, but on their convergence across distinct layers of maritime governance and their growing capacity to produce durable strategic gains despite the mechanisms intended to constrain them. The resulting challenge is not merely continued non-compliance with individual rules, but the progressive emergence of a competing maritime order capable of reshaping conditions on the water while China formally remains within the existing one.
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This was written by Dr. Benjamin Blandin, Non-Resident Fellow of the Stratbase Institute. Dr. Blandin is a French political scientist and maritime security expert. He holds a Ph.D. in Political Science (2025, Paris Catholic University), along with master’s degrees in geopolitics, geostrategy, and strategy consulting. Dr. Blandin is also a graduate of the French War College (IHEDN) and the French Naval Institute (CESM), and an alumnus of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) Summer Academy.
[1] The Battle of the Paracel Islands took place on 19 January 1974 in the Crescent Group of the Paracel archipelago between Chinese and South Vietnamese naval forces. Following the engagement, China seized the western part of the archipelago from South Vietnam, thereby establishing control over the entire Paracel Islands, which it has retained ever since.
[2] On 14 March 1988, Chinese and Vietnamese forces clashed at Johnson South Reef in the Spratly Islands. The confrontation left 64 Vietnamese personnel dead and three Vietnamese vessels lost, and enabled China to take control of the reef.
[3] The 2012 standoff began after Philippine authorities attempted to apprehend Chinese fishermen at Scarborough Shoal and developed into a confrontation lasting several weeks. An understanding was eventually reached under which both China and the Philippines would withdraw their vessels from the shoal. The Philippines complied, while China did not and maintained its presence, enabling Beijing to establish effective control over access to Scarborough Shoal.
[4] Adopted by the Western Pacific Naval Symposium in 2014, CUES is a non-binding instrument primarily governing unplanned encounters between naval ships and naval aircraft. It therefore does not cover many confrontations involving coast guard and maritime militia vessels.
[5] Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea, 4 November 2002, para. 5; China–Philippines Joint Statement, 21 October 2016, paras. 40–42.
[6] The Tribunal found that Chinese law-enforcement vessels operating at Scarborough Shoal in April and May 2012 had created serious risks of collision and violated COLREG Rules 2, 6, 7, 8, 15 and 16.
[7] The Arbitral Tribunal constituted under Annex VII to UNCLOS found Mischief Reef to be a low-tide elevation located within the Philippines’ EEZ and continental shelf. As a result, China could not generate maritime entitlements from the reef and had no right to construct artificial islands and installations there without Philippine authorization.
[8] Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative (CSIS), satellite imagery and analyses of Chinese Coast Guard and maritime militia deployments at Union Banks, Whitsun Reef, Iroquois Reef and Sabina Shoal.
[9] In 1987, China presented the construction of an ocean observation station in the Spratlys through UNESCO’s IOC as part of an international scientific programme. Yet a joint State Council–Central Military Commission directive described it as “a major measure for safeguarding our country’s territorial sovereignty” and authorized permanent personnel and self-defence weapons.
[10] In 1995, Wang Yi described the Chinese structures on Mischief Reef as shelters for fishermen. In 1999, following their expansion, he maintained that they were intended “for civilian purposes only” and could be made available for “joint use.”
[11] In September 2015, Xi Jinping stated that China “does not intend to pursue militarization” of its facilities in the Spratly Islands.
[12] China and the Philippines established a Bilateral Consultation Mechanism on the South China Sea in 2017 and subsequently agreed to strengthen direct communication between their foreign ministries, including through a dedicated hotline for maritime emergencies.
[13] China’s 2021 Coast Guard Law authorizes the Coast Guard to order foreign vessels to leave waters claimed under Chinese jurisdiction and permits the use of weapons under specified circumstances.
[14] In 2020, China established the Xisha and Nansha districts under Sansha City, a prefecture-level city headquartered on Woody Island in the Paracels. The Nansha District is headquartered on Fiery Cross Reef and formally administers the Spratly Islands and their claimed “adjacent waters.”
[15] China’s annual fishing moratorium covers parts of the South China Sea extending south to 12°N, overlapping waters claimed as exclusive economic zones by other coastal States. Vietnam and the Philippines have repeatedly protested its unilateral application to waters over which they claim sovereign rights.
[16] In April 2020, China assigned standardized names to 80 South China Sea features: 25 islands and reefs and 55 undersea features.
[17] Since 2021, China has required certain foreign vessels entering waters it claims as Chinese territorial waters to report identifying, positional and other information to Chinese maritime authorities.
[18] Government of the People’s Republic of China, Statement on China’s Territorial Sovereignty and Maritime Rights and Interests in the South China Sea, 12 July 2016.
[19] UNCLOS reserves the regime of archipelagic States to States constituted wholly by one or more archipelagos, whereas China is a continental State. Extending comparable baseline concepts to offshore island groups would potentially allow substantially broader maritime zones to be claimed around groups such as the Paracels or Spratlys.
