Tsinghua University Reports Highlight an Emerging Trend in City Hotlines in both China and the World: From Public Service Portals to Urban Governance Hubs

The reports were unveiled Monday at the opening ceremony of the 2026 Beijing Forum on Swift Response to Public Complaints, underscoring the growing role of hotlines in improving public services, strengthening government coordination and enhancing urban governance.

The reports, titled the Evaluation Report on China's 12345 Hotline Services and Governance Effectiveness (2026) and the Evaluation Report on Worldwide City Hotline Services and Governance Effectiveness (2026), respectively, examine how city hotlines can drive improvements in urban public service capacity as they evolve from channels for receiving public complaints into platforms that connect public needs with government responses, strengthen interdepartmental coordination and support more effective urban governance.

Led by Tsinghua University, the two reports were jointly compiled with the University of Cambridge and Peking University, respectively. An international team of more than 100 experts and scholars from 27 universities and research institutions across six countries, including China, the United Kingdom and the United States, conducted systematic research into hotline services and governance effectiveness.

The evaluations adopted the Hotline 4G Evaluation Indicator System (hereafter, the "4G System"), covering four first-level indicators: Process-Based Governance, Collaborative Governance, Digital Governance and Responsive Governance. The research drew on multiple data sources, including interviews with hotline agencies, public surveys, standardized test calls and big data analysis.

GLOBAL HOTLINES TAKE DIVERSE PATHS
The global report evaluated 20 cities across five continents, including Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, New York, Paris, Singapore and Rio de Janeiro. The assessment incorporated 9,300 valid public survey responses, large-scale data collection and detailed case studies.

The findings show that city hotlines worldwide are following diverse development paths shaped by local institutional environments, governance needs and technological capabilities. Based on their governance performance, the report groups the 20 cities into four development types: Comprehensive Innovation, Digital & Intelligent-Driven, Multi-Collaborative and Responsiveness-Oriented.

According to the report, Beijing, Dubai, New York, Shenzhen and Seoul demonstrate balanced development across multiple dimensions, reflecting a comprehensive innovation approach. San Francisco, Bangkok, Shanghai, Hong Kong and Singapore place greater emphasis on digital technology. Buenos Aires, Chengdu, Toronto, Hamburg, Rio de Janeiro and Rome highlight multi-stakeholder collaboration, while Amman, Paris, Madrid and Wuhan place greater emphasis on responsiveness and public experience.

Compared with the findings of the first global evaluation conducted in 2024, the governance performance of city hotlines worldwide has improved significantly, while a broader governance ecosystem built around city hotlines is rapidly taking shape across the globe, according to the report.

EVOLUTION OF CHINA'S 12345 HOTLINES
The report on China's 12345 hotlines covered 100 sample cities, collected 8,550 valid public survey responses and conducted more than 3,000 valid test calls to 12345 hotlines and related service channels.

The report finds that the institutional foundations for China's 12345 hotline services are largely in place, with service capabilities across cities becoming broadly similar. Differences in development are increasingly reflected in governance effectiveness.

The key factors determining hotline performance go beyond a city's size and level of development and increasingly depend on how effectively organizational coordination, lines of responsibility and operational mechanisms are aligned, according to the report.

Cities have developed distinctive governance approaches suited to their individual circumstances while pursuing the shared goal of serving the public and resolving problems. This creates opportunities for cities nationwide to learn from one another's innovations, the report says.

Meanwhile, the digital and intelligent development of hotlines is shifting from the wider adoption of technology toward the development of integrated governance ecosystems. The report notes that the key question for the future development of city hotlines is no longer simply whether technology is available, but whether it is effectively embedded in governance processes, whether data can support decision-making and whether intelligent applications can improve the handling of public concerns.

HOTLINES DRIVE URBAN GOVERNANCE
International comparisons illustrate different approaches to using hotline data for urban governance. New York's NYC311 service uses service data to inform urban governance, while Rio de Janeiro's Portal Rio 1746 helps monitor urban conditions through hotline data. China's 12345 hotlines use data analysis and assessment to support a shift from reactive responses toward more proactive governance.

Despite their different approaches, cities share a common goal: making it easier for public demands to enter the governance system, ensuring that they are accurately identified, effectively addressed and ultimately resolved, according to the report.

In China, Beijing's Reform of Swift Response to Public Complaints has leveraged public demands to drive innovation in the governance of a megacity. Beyond integrating hotline service resources, the reform has embedded complaint handling throughout urban governance processes and helped integrate the broader governance system, demonstrating strong performance across process-based governance, collaborative governance, digital governance and responsive governance, the report says.

PUTTING PEOPLE FIRST
Looking ahead, the reports identify four priorities for hotline development in the digital intelligence era: adhering to a people-centered principle and making public value a shared benchmark for assessing the integration of technology into governance; empowering cities through new technologies while ensuring that intelligent applications operate within institutional frameworks that are manageable, traceable and correctable; developing inclusive governance ecosystems to ensure that no citizen is left behind in digital transformation; and enabling cities around the world to learn from one another and advance together.

Experts participating in discussions on the reports said that as the basic service capabilities of city hotlines mature, their development should be evaluated not merely by how quickly calls are answered or whether service requests are processed, but more importantly by whether public concerns are genuinely resolved and whether governance outcomes are tangible and perceptible to the public.

Meng Tianguang, a professor at Tsinghua University's School of Social Sciences and deputy director of its Institute for Digital Government and Governance, said city hotlines need to accelerate their transition from public service platforms into hubs of urban governance.

Their development should focus not only on responding quickly to complaints, handling cases effectively and strengthening technological capabilities, but also on promoting coordination, resolving difficult problems and improving governance effectiveness, Meng said.

Helen Bao, a professor of Urban Economics and Public Policy in the Department of Land Economy at the University of Cambridge and director of its Lab for Interdisciplinary Spatial Analysis, said city hotlines should look beyond the operational efficiency of platforms and assess whether government responses translate into tangible governance outcomes that citizens can perceive.

Aligning improvements in institutional efficiency with the public's actual experience has become an important challenge for cities seeking to improve governance effectiveness worldwide, Bao said.

Both experts noted that Beijing's reform offers a representative example of China's approach to urban governance amid the global shift toward new governance models.

The 2026 Beijing Forum on Swift Response to Public Complaints, themed "Digital Intelligence Era and People's City," was held in Beijing from Oct. 12 to 13. The forum was jointly organized by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, China Media Group, the Beijing Municipal Committee of the Communist Party of China and the Beijing Municipal People's Government.

Hashtag: #TsinghuaUniversity #INSTITUTEFORDIGITALGOVERNMENT&GOVERNANCE

The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement.