Norway PM meets China premier in Beijing

published: 2017-04-12 14:02:10 (7 Apr 2017) Norway’s Prime Minister Erna Solberg started her 5-day visit to China on Friday, part of an effort to repair ties. The visit comes more than six years after Beijing froze Oslo out over the Nobel Peace Prize award to an imprisoned Chinese dissident. Solberg was received by her Chinese counterpart Li Keqiang with a welcoming ceremony, before the two sat down for bilateral meetings inside Great Hall of the People in Beijing. In 2010, Norway’s Nobel committee awarded Liu Xiaobo the peace prize, infuriating China. Liu is still imprisoned in northern China. Although Norway’s government has no say over the Nobel panel’s choices, China suspended a bilateral trade deal and restricted imports of Norwegian salmon.

Liu was convicted of subversion in 2009 and sentenced to 11 years in prison after he wrote and disseminated Charter ’08, a document calling for democracy.