Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, what assessment he has made of the adequacy of the resources allocated to developing and retaining China expertise across the diplomatic service and the wider civil service.

The Government's China Audit recognised that we cannot deal with China's complexity, unless we improve our capability to understand it. It made a commitment to develop greater depth and breadth of China expertise across departments and ensure we maximise the use of this knowledge. Last year, the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office's China Capability Programme trained over 1,000 people from Government departments, agencies and public bodies to build knowledge and language skills, working closely with the Great Britain-China Centre and other implementing partners. This continuous development offer supports the retention of China expertise across Government.