Signed, narrowed, returned: disputed diplomatic formulations in Indonesia-China and Philippines-China relations

Signed diplomatic formulations do not always cease to operate when an issuing state narrows their interpretation at home. This article examines what happens when domestic narrowing occurs, while the signed text remains in the bilateral archive. It compares Indonesia–China around the November 2024 Prabowo–Xi Joint Statement with Philippines-China from the 2005 Joint Marine Seismic Undertaking to renewed talks in 2026. In Indonesia, contested wording on ‘joint development in areas of overlapping claims’, carried in English and Chinese public records, was narrowed by ministerial clarification yet returned at presidential level within months. In the Philippines, cooperation language travelled across later instruments despite executive distancing and judicial nullification. Across both cases, disputed language persisted in the bilateral archive as domestic narrowing unfolded, showing that containment does not amount to erasure. Through intertextual analysis of bilateral documents, domestic clarifications, and later diplomatic references, the article traces these trajectories and the iterability of released texts. It contributes to the study of post-signature constraint in asymmetric diplomacy by showing how bilateral records can move at a different tempo from domestic narrowing..