China’s NPC has proactively developed exchanges and cooperation with foreign parliaments and international parliamentary organizations. These exchanges and cooperation have helped enhance mutual understanding and friendship, through which both the NPC and such parliaments work together to help build a fair and rational new international political and economic order and promote the lofty cause of world peace and development. Such work has also helped create a favorable international environment for China's reform and opening up and its modernization drive.

In the field of bilateral relations, the NPC has been committed to developing friendly contacts with parliaments to promote mutual support and cooperation with them in global affairs. In line with the policy of building good-neighborliness, friendly relationships, the NPC works to consolidate and deepen exchanges and cooperation with parliaments in neighboring countries to promote the development of friendly, good-neighborliness, cooperative ties with them. The NPC also works to cultivate and strengthen its contacts with parliaments in developed countries to increase mutual understanding and expand consensus. At present, the NPC has already established ties with parliaments in over 180 countries, bilateral friendship groups or associations with parliaments in 83 countries, and regular consultation mechanisms with parliaments in 14 countries to exchange views on bilateral relations and international and regional issues of mutual concern. Exchanges of high-level visits between the NPC Chairman or Vice Chairmen and their foreign counterparts, exchanges between special committees and between bilateral friendship groups, and mutual contacts between administrative offices constantly expand the scope of cooperation and enrich its content.

China’s NPC actively involves itself in activities of international and regional parliamentary organizations. It advocates democracy in international affairs, opposes hegemony, power politics, and terrorism in all forms and is dedicated to working with peoples from all nations to promote world peace, development and progress. Ever since its accession to the Inter-Parliamentary Union in 1984, China’s NPC has sent delegations to the Union’s annual conference every year. In 1996 China’s NPC successfully hosted the 96th Inter-Parliamentary Conference. In 2000 the Chairman of the NPC Standing Committee attended the Speakers Millennium Conference of the Inter-Parliamentary Union. In 2005, the Chairman of the NPC Standing Committee also attended the World Speakers Conference. As a founding member, China’s NPC actively participates in the activities of the Association of Asian Parliaments for Peace, the Forum Presiding Officers Conference of South Pacific Islands, the Asia-Pacific Parliamentary Forum and the Asian Forum of Parliamentarians on Population and Development. As an observer, China’s NPC took part in activities of the ASEAN Inter-Parliamentary Organization, the Asia-Pacific Parliamentary Conference on Environment and Development and other regional parliamentary organizations. China’s NPC also hosted the 6th Asia-Pacific Parliamentary Conference on Environment and Development, the 3rd Annual Meeting of the Association of Asian Parliaments for Peace, the Conference of the Executive Council of the Association of Asian Parliaments for Peace, and the 5th Asia-Europe Young Parliamentarians Meeting.