标签： Asia

The highest-level face-to-face negotiations between the United States and Iran since the 1979 Islamic Revolution have concluded without a breakthrough in Islamabad, Pakistan, after 21 hours of marathon discussions that stretched into early Sunday morning local time. Mediated by Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, the April 2026 talks brought top-tier officials from both nations together at a critical moment, when heightened military tensions have already reshaped global energy markets and raised fears of a wider regional conflict.

Speaking to reporters shortly after the talks collapsed, US Vice President JD Vance confirmed that the negotiations fell apart after Iranian delegates rejected Washington’s core demand for a formal, binding commitment that Iran would abandon its nuclear weapons ambitions and forgo the materials and infrastructure needed to develop a nuclear device rapidly. Vance emphasized that he maintained constant, real-time communication with US President Donald Trump and other senior administration leaders throughout the 21-hour dialogue, checking in with Trump between half a dozen and a dozen times alone. He also remained in close coordination with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, and Admiral Brad Cooper, head of US Central Command (CENTCOM).

“The simple fact is that we need to see an affirmative commitment that they will not seek a nuclear weapon, and they will not seek the tools that would enable them to quickly achieve a nuclear weapon. That is the core goal of the president of the United States, and that’s what we’ve tried to achieve through these negotiations,” Vance told reporters, flanked by US special envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner at a televised press conference in the Pakistani capital. Saturday’s meeting marked a historic moment: the first meeting between top US and Iranian leaders at the highest level in more than 50 years, following the 1979 Islamic Revolution that severed formal diplomatic ties between the two nations. Just one day before the talks opened, Vance had struck an optimistic tone, telling reporters he expected a positive outcome.

For the Trump administration, two non-negotiable priorities anchored the US negotiating position: securing freedom of navigation through the Strait of Hormuz and rolling back Iran’s nuclear enrichment program. Of these two, the nuclear issue emerged as the ultimate sticking point that derailed a potential deal. In the lead-up to the talks, the US had demanded deep cuts to Iran’s enrichment activities, a demand Tehran has rejected as a violation of its sovereign rights.

In an official statement posted to social media Sunday, Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqhaei confirmed that the negotiations covered all core sticking points between the two sides, including navigation rights in the Strait of Hormuz, the nuclear program, war reparations, the lifting of US economic sanctions, and a permanent end to hostilities against Iran and across the broader Middle East. Baqhaei made clear that any path to a successful agreement would require the US to acknowledge and respect Iran’s legitimate national rights and interests, a condition Washington was unwilling to meet in this round of talks.

The negotiations unfolded against a backdrop of open military conflict between the two nations that began in late February 2026, when US-Israel joint strikes eliminated a number of Iran’s top leaders, including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and national security chief Ali Larijani. After Iran responded by closing the Strait of Hormuz — a critical global energy chokepoint through which roughly 20 percent of the world’s daily oil supply passes — global crude prices spiked dramatically, triggering widespread economic concerns across major energy importing and exporting nations. Pakistan brokered a two-week temporary ceasefire between the two sides that went into effect on April 7, and that ceasefire remains in place as of Sunday.

Even before the talks began, Trump struck a defiant tone in comments to reporters outside the White House Saturday, claiming the US had already achieved a military victory over Iran regardless of the negotiation outcome. “Regardless of what happens, we win. Let’s see what happens – maybe they make a deal, maybe they don’t. It doesn’t matter. From the standpoint of America, we win,” Trump said, repeating his earlier claim that US forces had already begun clearing mines from the Strait of Hormuz and had sunk Iranian minelaying vessels — a claim Iranian officials have flatly denied.

CENTCOM later confirmed the US naval operation on social media platform X, stating that two US Navy guided-missile destroyers, the USS Frank E. Peterson and USS Michael Murphy, had transited the strait and begun operations in the Arabian Gulf as part of a broader mission to clear sea mines laid by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps. In response to the US operation, Iran’s state military command issued a statement asserting that Iran retains full control over all vessel traffic through the strait, and that any movement of foreign ships requires Iranian authorization.

As the temporary ceasefire holds and both sides retreat from the negotiating table without a deal, regional observers remain on high alert for a resumption of hostilities, while global energy markets continue to grapple with volatility triggered by the weeks-long disruption to one of the world’s most critical energy shipping routes.

BEIJING, April 12, 2026 — In a significant step to deepen cross-Strait engagement, China’s top Taiwan affairs authority has introduced a comprehensive 10-policy package aimed at expanding exchanges and cooperation between the Chinese mainland and Taiwan. The initiative was formally announced on Sunday by the Taiwan Work Office of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, coinciding with the final day of a high-profile visit to the mainland by a Kuomintang (KMT) delegation led by KMT Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun. Cheng and her delegation had been in the mainland for official engagements from April 8 to April 12, holding a series of constructive meetings with mainland officials and party representatives. According to the official announcement, the overarching goals of the new policy package are twofold: to advance the steady peaceful development of relations across the Taiwan Strait, and to strengthen the shared kinship between compatriots on both sides while improving public well-being for all people living across the two sides of the strait. The policy rollout comes at a time of growing people-to-people exchanges between the mainland and Taiwan, with cross-Strait cooperation expanding across economic, cultural, educational and social sectors in recent years. The introduction of the targeted 10-measure framework signals the mainland’s continued commitment to promoting mutually beneficial collaboration and deepening connections that benefit residents on both sides, reinforcing the foundation for long-term peaceful cross-Strait relations.

The latest round of high-stakes peace negotiations between the United States and Iran hosted in Islamabad concluded on Sunday with no breakthrough deal to show for days of intensive diplomatic engagement, U.S. Vice President JD Vance, who led the American delegation to the talks, confirmed to reporters on Sunday. The lead U.S. negotiator announced that the American delegation would now return to Washington, noting that Tehran ultimately rejected the terms put forward by the U.S. negotiating team. Vance also highlighted that disagreements over Iran’s nuclear program remain one of the most critical and unresolved points of contention between the two sides, leaving no path to a consensus after the closed-door negotiations. The discussions, which were held in the Pakistani capital, marked another high-profile diplomatic push to ease long-running tensions between Washington and Tehran, but failed to deliver the tangible progress that international observers had hoped for.

BEIJING, April 12, 2026 — As China enters the pivotal 15th Five-Year Plan period (2026-2030), the country’s top leadership has elevated the strategic importance of the service sector — already the largest pillar of its economy and a major engine of employment — to unprecedented heights, laying out a clear roadmap for its high-quality evolution.

President Xi Jinping, who also serves as General Secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and Chairman of the Central Military Commission, delivered a key instruction at the first-ever national conference on the service sector held earlier this week, calling for fresh breakthroughs in advancing the sector’s high-quality development.

Official statistics from 2025 underscore just how central the service industry has become to China’s economic landscape: its added value topped 80 trillion yuan (approximately $11.65 trillion), accounting for 57.7% of national GDP. The sector contributed 61.4% of the country’s overall economic growth, a 3.7 percentage point increase from 2024, and supports roughly half of China’s total workforce.

Against a backdrop of persistent global economic volatility, the new policy focus on the service sector comes as China continues its structural transformation toward high-quality growth. Xi’s direction is expected to cement the sector’s critical role in driving industrial upgrading, fostering innovation, unlocking untapped domestic demand, and stabilizing the broader national economy.

While the sector has delivered strong foundational growth, policymakers have acknowledged pressing challenges that threaten its long-term progress. Persistent market entry barriers in key sub-sectors, an imbalanced supply structure, and a shortage of high-end service offerings have grown increasingly prominent. Addressing these gaps has been framed as a strategic priority to unlock the next phase of China’s economic expansion.

In his instruction, Xi outlined four core pillars for future development: demand-driven growth, breakthroughs in market-oriented reform, technological empowerment, and expanded opening-up and international cooperation. He called for the implementation of national initiatives to expand service capacity and upgrade quality, goals already enshrined in this year’s Government Work Report and the 15th Five-Year Plan outline.

Even as China continues to prioritize its world-leading manufacturing sector, Xi has long emphasized the critical role of services, which underpin both industrial production and household consumption. Over recent years, his on-the-ground inspections have included visits to financial and technology service providers, elderly care facilities, and cultural tourism destinations, highlighting the sector’s priority on the national policy agenda.
Already, targeted policy measures have begun rolling out across government agencies. Earlier this year, the Ministry of Commerce joined eight other departments to release the 2026 Work Plan for Improving Quality and Accessibility of Service Consumption, which focuses on upgrading service infrastructure while addressing pressing livelihood needs including elderly and childcare services.

Looking ahead, Xi has set clear priorities for sub-sector development: advancing producer services toward greater specialization and higher positions in the global value chain, fostering high-quality, diverse and accessible consumer services, and building globally competitive “China Services” brands.

Producer services — which range from research and development, design and inspection certification to information technology — are in particularly high demand as China scales up its advanced manufacturing sector. During a March 2026 inspection of Xiong’an New Area, the planned “future city” in Hebei Province, Xi called for clustered development of emerging and future-oriented industries, with robust growth in producer services to support the transformation and upgrading of traditional manufacturing.

Cheng Xiang, an analyst with Shenwan Hongyuan Securities, noted that producer services have already emerged as a high-growth investment focus, driven by deep integration with advanced manufacturing, favorable policy tailwinds, and massive untapped demand.

On the consumer side, growing urbanization and a steadily expanding middle class have shifted household spending priorities toward services, creating enormous potential to boost domestic demand. Xi has repeatedly outlined policy priorities for a wide range of consumer-facing service sectors tied to people’s livelihoods, from cultural tourism to elderly care.

At the December 2025 Central Economic Work Conference, Xi emphasized the need to remove unreasonable regulatory restrictions on consumption to unlock growth potential in service sectors including culture and tourism, sports events, catering, and health and wellness. During the Central Urban Work Conference in July 2025, he called for accelerated development of livelihood-focused services including healthcare and domestic services to adapt to shifting population and demand structures.

By upgrading consumption offerings, meeting growing personalized demand, and expanding the supply of inclusive, high-quality services, China can fully unlock the potential of service consumption, strengthening the resilience of domestic economic circulation as spending shifts from goods acquisition to high-quality services and experiences.

Alongside domestic reform and expansion, continued growth of the service sector will rely on deeper opening-up to international participation. In a 2025 letter to the China International Fair for Trade in Services (CIFTIS), Xi committed that China would accelerate the opening of its service market and advance high-quality development of trade in services.

In recent years, China has steadily eased foreign investment access restrictions and advanced orderly opening-up of sectors including telecommunications, internet services, education, culture and healthcare. It has also fostered service trade innovation through flagship platforms such as CIFTIS, and expanded its comprehensive service sector opening pilot program to 20 regions spanning all major regions of the country.

Analysts project that the new push from national leadership will trigger a fresh wave of opening-up, expansion and upgrading measures, injecting renewed momentum into the service sector and reinforcing its role as a core driver of China’s economic resilience.

After days of closed-door diplomatic discussions in the Pakistani capital, the third round of high-stakes negotiations between the United States and Iran has wrapped up, with deep, unresolved divisions remaining between the two long-adversarial nations. Iran’s semi-official Tasnim News Agency first reported on the outcome of the talks this Sunday, confirming that core sticking points including control and access to the Strait of Hormuz, a critical global oil chokepoint, have not been resolved and remain major sources of “serious disagreement”.

While the outcome of the latest round reflects how far apart the two sides remain on key issues, the Iranian government has signaled its commitment to continued diplomatic engagement. In an official statement posted to its social media channels, the administration emphasized that despite the profound disagreements that emerged during the latest round of talks, diplomatic channels will remain open and negotiations will proceed in future rounds.

The talks, hosted by Pakistan, mark the latest attempt to de-escalate decades of tensions between Washington and Tehran, with both global powers weighing in on issues that carry significant implications for regional security and global energy markets. The Strait of Hormuz, which roughly a fifth of global oil supplies pass through daily, has long been a flashpoint between the two nations, with Iran repeatedly asserting full sovereignty over the waterway and the US pushing for open, unimpeded navigation for commercial and military vessels.

BANGKOK, Associated Press – More than seven decades after the cross-Strait split, and amid years of rising tensions between Beijing and the ruling Taipei administration, mainland China announced Sunday a series of measures to restore suspended cross-Strait connections, following a landmark meeting between Chinese leader Xi Jinping and the chair of Taiwan’s Beijing-leaning opposition Kuomintang Party (KMT), Cheng Li-wun.

The high-profile gathering between Xi and Cheng in Beijing on Friday centered on public calls for cross-Strait peace, though no concrete policy details were released by either side. In an official statement released Sunday, the Communist Party of China’s Taiwan Work Office outlined multiple steps to rebuild ties that have been frozen for years: the resumption of direct flights linking Taiwan to mainland cities including Xi’an and Urumqi, the restart of imports of Taiwanese aquaculture goods previously blocked by Beijing, and a plan to explore the establishment of a permanent communication channel between the CPC and the KMT. Beijing also reaffirmed its long-proposed plan to advance the construction of a cross-Strait bridge connecting mainland China to Taiwan’s Kinmen and Matsu islands, which lie just off the Chinese coast.

Cross-Strait relations have deteriorated sharply since 2016, when pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party leader Tsai Ing-wen won Taiwan’s presidential election. Beijing has cut off almost all official dialogue with Taipei’s ruling government, and increased regular military patrols of warships and fighter jets near Taiwan’s borders in a show of sovereignty. China continues to claim Taiwan as an integral part of its own territory, and has never formally ruled out the use of military force to bring the self-governing island under its control.

Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council, the government body that oversees cross-Strait relations, quickly pushed back on Beijing’s announcement, framing the new measures and proposed cross-party communication mechanism as unilateral political deals between the CPC and KMT that bypass Taiwan’s democratically elected government. The agency reaffirmed Taipei’s long-held position that all cross-Strait affairs involving public authority must be negotiated between the two governments on an equal, mutually respectful footing to deliver tangible benefits that protect the rights and well-being of Taiwan’s people. Critics note that it remains unclear how the new measures announced by Beijing can be implemented without formal approval from Taipei’s government, given existing cross-border travel and trade regulations.

To provide context for the latest developments: Beijing first banned individual tourism travel to Taiwan for Chinese citizens in 2019, and current Taiwanese entry rules require Chinese passport holders to hold a valid third-country residence visa (issued by nations such as the U.S. or EU member states) to qualify for a Taiwanese visitor visa. On the trade front, Beijing first blocked imports of Taiwanese pineapples in 2021, before expanding restrictions to other agricultural and aquaculture goods, including grouper, squid, and tuna. After the grouper import ban was imposed, Taiwan’s Ministry of Agriculture attempted to negotiate with Beijing to revise production standards to meet Chinese import requirements, but Beijing only approved a small, unelaborated list of individual Taiwanese firms for limited exports.