Beijing opens forum on modern city governance

The "2024 Beijing Forum on Swift Response to Public Complaints", with the permanent theme of "People's City, Better Future," was opened in Beijing on Wednesday.

The 2024 annual theme of the forum is "Modernizing for People-centered Urban Governance", A series of outcomes of the forum were released at the opening ceremony, including Compilation of Research Papers on Swift Response to Public Complaints in Beijing (2024), Cases of Urban Governance Innovation (2024), and Evaluation Report on Worldwide City Hotline Services and Governance Effectiveness (2024).

The forum features an opening ceremony and a main forum, six parallel sessions and other supporting activities, as well as a closing ceremony.

On Tuesday, dozens of international guests, including foreign government officials, experts and scholars, walked into the 12345 Citizen Service Hotline Reception Hall in Beijing to learn about the hotline and online channels for public requests in an "Approaching 12345" event.

The visitors stood next to the operators and listened to the citizen hotline to experience firsthand the process and effectiveness of "one hotline leveraging urban governance reform" through this on-site visit.

Andreas Grammatikogiannis, deputy mayor of Athens, Greece, shared similar experiences in his own country. In order to resolve people's problems, Greece also set up similar platforms like the 12345 Hotline and an online platform where people can sign up and report problems with photos or relevant evidence of documentations, he said.

Grammatikogiannis believed that it was very exciting and rewarding to visit Beijing 12345 closely, saying that "It's a great opportunity to discuss new ideas, share best practices between the two cities, and try to find common solutions in problems that we have in Athens as well as in Beijing."

According to the organizer, this forum is co-sponsored by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, China Media Group, the CPC Beijing Municipal Committee and the People's Government of Beijing Municipality. The international academic journal Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis: Research and Practice was invited as a co-organizer of the forum.