Apart from meeting with the President of the Storting (Norway’s parliament) and the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and Defence, Chairman Li will have an audience at the Royal Palace and a meeting with Prime Minister Erna Solberg.

Chairman Li will arrive with a delegation consisting of the Secretary-General of the National People’s Congress as well as a variety of congressional committee members and the Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs with responsibility for European affairs, among others.

Palace, Parliament and Prime Minister

The programme includes an audience with King Harald V and meetings with Storting President Tone Wilhelmsen Trøen, Prime Minister Erna Solberg and the Storting’s Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and Defence.

Chairman Li and the President of the Storting are also scheduled to open a bilateral business seminar together. For Mr Li, another item on the programme is winter sports cooperation between Norway and China.

“This visit confirms the positive development of relations between our countries, and that the dialogue between the Storting and the National People’s Congress is good,” says the Storting’s President, Tone Wilhelmsen Trøen.

“Norway has much to gain from close, broad-based, long-term cooperation and contact with China,” she adds.

In addition to the meetings in Oslo, Chairman Li and his delegation will visit Rogaland county to become better acquainted with the business community in the region.

Visit in 2004

The previous official visit to Norway by Chinese officials at this level was in 2004, when Wu Bangguo, then Chairman of the NPC, led the Chinese delegation. That visit came about at the invitation of Jørgen Kosmo, then the President of the Storting, who had been in China the same year.

The upcoming visit is the result of an invitation from Ms Trøen, the current President of the Storting. In January 2018, when Olemic Thommessen was President of the Storting, Mr Thommessen presented an invitation to Chairman Li’s predecessor, Zhang Dejiang, during a visit to Beijing with other Nordic-Baltic parliamentary presidents.

This year, Norway and China mark 65 years of diplomatic relations.