"China has simply ignored that ruling, prompting the Philippines to switch to trying to shame Beijing by sending its own hugely outnumbered coastguard ships" [ignored that ruling]
China's non-compliance with the Hague ruling and the Philippines' subsequent pivot away from legal strategy directly illustrates how impunity for ignoring arbitration erodes the legal channel as a viable tool.
Reasoning from this article
The 2016 Hague ruling was among the most comprehensive international arbitration decisions on maritime sovereignty ever issued, yet it produced zero behavioral change from China. The Philippines' subsequent pivot to military alliances, shaming operations, and physical fortification shows that legal victory without enforcement capacity is strategically worthless. This dynamic generalizes: in any domain where a powerful actor can absorb reputational costs of non-compliance, international legal rulings function as signals of weakness for the winning party rather than constraints on the losing one.