On the afternoon of October 12, at the opening ceremony of the 2026 Beijing Forum on Swift Response to Public Complaints, 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) were officially released. Reflecting changes in urban governance in the digital age, the reports assess performance across four dimensions: process governance, collaborative governance, digital governance, and responsive governance.

The two reports were developed by a team led by Tsinghua University, in collaboration with Peking University and the University of Cambridge. The research team brought together experts and scholars from 27 universities and research institutions across six countries, including China, the United Kingdom, and the United States, to systematically study urban hotline services and their effectiveness in governance.

The Evaluation Report on China's 12345 Hotline Services and Governance Effectiveness (2026) covers 100 sample cities and draws on 8,550 valid responses to public surveys and more than 3,000 valid test calls to the 12345 hotlines. The report shows that China's 12345 hotlines are evolving from gateways to public services into hubs of urban governance. The institutional framework of the national 12345 hotline system has largely taken shape; the gap in basic capacity among cities has narrowed, and differences in governance outcomes depend more on whether organizational coordination, lines of responsibility, and operating mechanisms function effectively. Working toward shared goals, different cities have developed governance models with distinctive features. At the same time, the digital transformation of hotlines is shifting from using technological tools toward building an urban governance ecosystem. Future progress will depend on whether technology is embedded in governance, whether data drive decision-making, and whether smart applications can improve the quality and efficiency of handling public requests.

The Evaluation Report on Worldwide City Hotline Services and Governance Effectiveness (2026) examines 20 globally influential and regionally representative cities, including Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, New York, Paris, Singapore, and Rio de Janeiro, and draws on interviews with hotline agencies and 9,300 valid responses to public surveys. The report shows that in terms of process governance, cities such as Beijing, Dubai, and Toronto have the most mature systems; in terms of collaborative governance, cities such as Beijing, Buenos Aires, and Rome have achieved notable results in institutional development and platform connectivity; in terms of digital governance, cities such as Beijing, New York, Singapore, and Bangkok have formed interconnected data support systems; and in terms of responsive governance, cities such as Beijing, Paris, and Madrid have all delivered outstanding results. Based on overall performance, the 20 cities are grouped into four categories: comprehensive innovation-oriented, digital-intelligence-driven, multi-stakeholder collaborative, and response-oriented. Compared with the first assessment in 2024, the governance effectiveness of global city hotlines has improved significantly overall, and a hotline-based urban governance ecosystem is taking shape at an accelerating pace globally. Chinese cities participating in the assessment all saw notable increases in their scores across the four primary indicators.

According to the two reports, Beijing's reforms to ensure swift responses to public complaints show how to continually turn citizens' requests into governance resources, then convert those resources into governance capacity and that capacity into effective governance. Viewed from a global perspective, governance across the entire process, organizational collaboration, use of data, and proactive responses embodied in Beijing's Swift Response to Public Complaints reform are rooted in the city's institutional environment and experience in governing a megacity, while also reflecting the shared goals of global urban governance. This approach is grounded in China's innovative efforts to modernize urban governance and offers a Chinese model for cities worldwide exploring governance innovation driven by public requests.

(Source: 2026 Beijing Forum on Swift Response to Public Complaints)