On a night cruise along Beijing's Grand Canal, foreign resident Marie enjoyed a light show and water performance, unaware that the experience began with a small problem she encountered weeks earlier.

Marie, who has lived in Beijing for years, had tried to register for a trial run of "Yun Shang Xing" water performance on the Grand Canal in Tongzhou District. But the registration system only accepted Chinese mainland identity cards, leaving her unable to register with her passport.

She turned to Beijing's dedicated 12345 online channel for foreign residents, suggesting that organizers consider the needs of foreign residents when planning public activities so they could enjoy city services on equal footing.

The response was swift. The Tongzhou branch of the 12345 service center coordinated with the event operator, and within one business day, the system was upgraded to accept passports and other foreign identity documents. Staff also contacted Marie, offered to register her manually and invited her to experience the performance free of charge.

"I appreciate the prompt response to my suggestion," Marie said, calling the responsiveness of Beijing government services one of the factors that makes the capital attractive to foreigners.

Her experience offers a glimpse into China's "people's city" concept – a governance approach that puts people's needs at the center and seeks to make urban services more inclusive and responsive.

What lies behind the hotline?

For Marie, the problem was solved when the registration system was updated. But if the same problem could affect other foreign residents, fixing the system could also help avoid similar problems in the future.

That points to a broader role for Beijing's 12345 service: beyond responding to individual complaints, the platform generates a large pool of data that can be used to improve urban governance.

Ma Liang, a professor at the School of Government under Peking University, said Beijing's hotline has received more than 200 million complaints and requests over the past seven years, generating a valuable dataset for government decision-making.

The data can help governments identify which issues should be prioritized, spot patterns across different periods, locations and sectors, and develop systematic solutions rather than addressing similar problems case by case, Ma said. In Beijing, for example, government departments can use the information to set monthly priorities and mobilize resources to address emerging issues.

Big data analytics, AI and algorithms can further help identify patterns and insights in the data, while cooperation with academics and industry can help develop models to better inform urban governance, Ma said.

This is where "swift response" can develop into "proactive governance": while the former focuses on responding to resident's concerns, the latter uses information and data to identify and address potential problems in advance.

What happens after a complaint?

Marie's experience points to another dimension of urban governance: what happens after resident's concerns are heard.

As Zhang Youlang, vice dean of the School of Public Administration under Renmin University of China, explained to CGTN, public feedback enters the government decision-making process, where departments determine whether an issue is an isolated case or reflects a broader problem. If they identify it as systemic, the response may prompt adjustments to management practices or government budget allocations. In this way, addressing one problem can also help address a wider category of problems.

This process gives public feedback a role in shaping how the city is managed. It also helps illustrate the connection with China's concept of whole-process people's democracy, in which public participation can become part of the ongoing process of governance and decision-making.

Professor Ma also emphasized that channels such as 12345 can serve not only as a way for citizens to raise complaints, but also as a channel for them to offer suggestions and share their knowledge and insights with the government. In a city as diverse as Beijing, residents – including foreign residents with experience of other cities and countries – can bring different perspectives that may help inform policymaking and the delivery of public services.

"This is 'whole-process people's democracy' in action – a process of co-design, co-creation and co-evaluation," he told CGTN.

Ma also sees value in such practices beyond China. As cities around the world face increasingly complex urban governance challenges, he said, governments can use hotlines, social media and other channels for public feedback, analyze the data and improve their responses to everyday problems.

For Marie, it began with a minor registration hurdle. The response, however, turned her suggestion into a practical improvement in public services, making the city more accessible to people from different backgrounds.