Rearrange the parts of the sentence to form a meaningful statement about senior officials signalling the readiness of China to negotiate a solution.

Introduction / Context:
Rearrangement questions test your ability to recognise logical sentence structure and word order in English. Here, you are given three segments labelled P, Q, and R, and a base subject phrase "Senior officials". You must decide the correct order of the segments so that a clear and grammatically correct sentence emerges. The sentence describes senior officials sending a signal that China is ready to negotiate a solution, which is a typical diplomatic or political context often found in newspaper articles.

Given Data / Assumptions:

Opening phrase: "Senior officials".
P: "to negotiate a solution".
Q: "readiness".
R: "have signalled China's".
We must combine these into one grammatical and meaningful sentence.
The final sentence should reflect normal English word order and logical flow of meaning.

Concept / Approach:
In English, the usual structure for such a sentence is: subject + verb phrase + object + complement. The subject is "Senior officials". The verb phrase is "have signalled". The object is "China's readiness". The infinitive phrase "to negotiate a solution" explains readiness and should follow "readiness". So we need an order where R, Q, and P follow the subject smoothly to produce "Senior officials have signalled China's readiness to negotiate a solution." We check each option to see which sequence yields this structure.

Step-by-Step Solution:
Step 1: Start with the fixed beginning "Senior officials". Step 2: Consider R: "have signalled China's". This logically follows the subject because it contains the auxiliary verb "have" and the main verb "signalled". So we get "Senior officials have signalled China's". Step 3: Next, we need a noun immediately after "China's" to indicate what belongs to China. Q: "readiness" is a noun, so "China's readiness" fits perfectly. Step 4: Finally, we add P: "to negotiate a solution" to describe what kind of readiness China has. This produces "China's readiness to negotiate a solution", completing the sense. Step 5: Combine everything: "Senior officials have signalled China's readiness to negotiate a solution." Step 6: The sequence we used for the segments is R (have signalled China's), Q (readiness), P (to negotiate a solution). This is option B, RQP.

Verification / Alternative check:
Test another sequence, for example PQR. "Senior officials to negotiate a solution readiness have signalled China's" is ungrammatical and confused. Also QRP would give "Senior officials readiness have signalled China's to negotiate a solution", which again is wrong. Only RQP gives a smooth verbal group after the subject, followed by a correctly ordered noun phrase and an infinitive phrase. Reading the final sentence aloud, "Senior officials have signalled China's readiness to negotiate a solution", confirms that it matches real newspaper style English.

Why Other Options Are Wrong:
Option A, QRP, places "readiness" immediately after "Senior officials", resulting in "Senior officials readiness", which is not a valid subject phrase and breaks the verb structure.
Option C, PRQ, starts with "to negotiate a solution", which cannot directly follow the subject and does not contain the main verb, so the sentence remains incomplete.
Option D, PQR, leads to an even more jumbled structure, where the verb "have signalled" appears too late and the relationships between phrases are not clear.

Common Pitfalls:
A common error in such questions is picking an order that sounds partially correct in the middle but fails as a full sentence. Some learners also focus only on meaning blocks like "to negotiate a solution" and forget that a sentence must have a clear verb phrase earlier. To avoid this, always identify the main verb and make sure it appears soon after the subject. Then place possessive forms like "China's" directly before the noun they modify, such as "readiness". Finally, add any infinitive phrase that explains purpose after the main noun phrase.

Final Answer:
RQP