Reflections on Western and Chinese Approaches to Operate Local Government

Jan 18, 2025

In my hometown, my mum serves on the local community council (the lowest tier of representative government in the UK). Community councils are usually given a minuscule budget by the larger county or city government to spend on projects in their community: host a local gala, re-paint the park benches, maintain a local news board - that sort of thing. In my hometown, these duties also include managing the local Partnership Centre. This is a large building in the center of the town where you can find the local library, a community cafe, and a dance hall - basically a one-stop shop for community activities.

Linlithgow Partnership Centre at Linlithgow, Scotland

At the start of this winter the community council got bad news - the county government is no longer going to cover the running costs of the Partnership Centre. However, the county hasn’t made a decision to close the Partnership Centre. Instead, they have told the community council that it is their decision if they want to keep the Centre running after the county pulls funding in the summer.

But this isn’t much of a choice: without help from the county, the local community council will have to find an extra £8000 a month for upkeep costs. In the working-class town where I grew up, it is inconceivable the community will find this kind of money. Next year, the Partnership Centre will close because the government has slashed local budgets, but, on paper at least, the decision will have been made by the local community, and this will probably be enough to ensure the lion’s share of the blame is laid at the feet of the community council.

I was thinking about this story recently when I attended the Beijing Forum on Swift Response to Public Complaints. This Forum was primarily to discuss the progress made on the 12345 Hotline (more on this later), but experts from North America and Europe were also in attendance to share their thoughts on local governance.

The key concepts put forward by Western contributors were those of a responsible citizenry and localism. We heard about how difficult it was for central or municipal government in the West to coordinate with local communities: for example, about how, during the pandemic, New York City government initially found it difficult to establish adequate local testing centres because the municipal government simply didn’t have a good idea of where in the local community had the capacity to host them.

In Europe and North America the solution for this kind of administrative fog is decentralization. Those decisions that can be made in the local area will be made there because, we are told, local people will have a better understanding of local needs and capacity than a bureaucrat in a city hall, regional assembly, or national government. The future of Western municipal government is creating responsible citizens who will work as partners with the government to deliver for their local area.

In the United Kingdom, we have been testing this style of local government for decades. From Tony Blair’s commitment to devolution to David Cameron’s Big Society to Keir Starmer’s new deal for the regions, successive British governments have been championing localism as a solution to difficult local problems. And there is a reason it has attracted support from across the political spectrum: it sounds really good. Who doesn’t like the idea of putting local people in charge of their own lives?

Yet, I couldn’t help but keep thinking about my mum and her community council. They have been empowered to make a decision for their local community, but resource constraints mean that there is only one realistic outcome. In theory, local people are making decisions about their town. In practice, though, the government is outsourcing blame for a funding decision that was ultimately taken in London. This is localism not as a practical solution to administrative problems, but as a way to offload guilt for austerity onto local people.

At the Conference the Chinese philosophy for local governance was also on display, and it was markedly different from the Western variation. A representative example of this Chinese theory of local governance is the 12345 Hotline.

The Beijing 12345 Hotline was established in 1987 as a “Mayor’s Hotline” (there were back then only three operators and one line). The Hotline has since expanded into a comprehensive citizens’ complaint system, operating in eight languages with 1700 operators. Between January and September 2024, the Beijing Hotline received around 18 million calls and reported a satisfaction rate of 97%. Since being first set up in the 1980s, the complaints hotline has expanded across the country, with most major cities having their own version.

A screen presents real-time analytics data at the Beijing 12345 Citizen Hotline Service Center, Oct.11, 2024. Photo: Liao Jiaxin/China.org.cn

The Hotline exists so that normal citizens can alert the government to problems in their local area. This can be anything ranging from a stray cat causing a nuisance to traffic problems in your morning commute, to a workplace violating health and safety regulations. The operators will assess the problem and either try to solve the issue there and then or pass the issue on to the relevant department.

The 12345 Hotline has solved this conundrum of administrative fog for Chinese city governance. Through the hotline, citizens now organically report problems and concerns about their lives to the district and city government. Putting all this data together gives the municipal and provincial governments a pretty good idea of what works and what needs to improve, while it gives residents (both Chinese and foreign) a way to communicate directly with the government.

The dual-screen setup for operators in the Beijing 12345 Citizen Hotline Service Center, Oct.11, 2024. Photo: Liao Jiaxin/China.org.cn

Of course, the 12345 Hotline isn’t the only mechanism by which local residents can pass on their complaints and ideas to the government: for example, one sub-district administrator reported great success in setting up WeChat groups for various stakeholders in the local community (one for foreigners, another for business owners and so on). Another attendee reported holding regular focus groups with different representatives of the local community.

All this is to say that Chinese municipalities have found a way to deliver on the promise of localism championed by Western politicians and academics. Local people are included in a continuous process of consultation about their local community. Unlike in the case of my hometown, however, local people are not set adrift from the central government, tasked with dealing with problems that are beyond the scope of local resources to solve. Instead, local people and communities are integrated into a decision-making process that ultimately includes the national government - what is called in China a whole-process people’s democracy.

While Western politics is often about parceling out responsibility (and blame) for a problem, Chinese politics is about trying to find a solution to a problem. The 12345 Hotline is probably the most representative example of this solution-orientated approach to local governance. And judging by the positive response of Chinese citizens, it is an approach to local governance that resonates with everyday people.

About the Author

Douglas Rooney: Scottish Christian Socialist, currently working in Beijing. Lecture in English literature and language.

Doug’s X page: @Doug_rooney

Page Editor: Jin Yulin

Call for Contributors!

I’ve added an “ Op-Ed” section to China Up Close. It’s an open platform I specifically designed to let everyone share their own perspectives with the world. Articles can be related to any topic as long as you’re highly passionate about it! Article length is recommended to be within 700 - 900 words.

If you have an idea for an Op-Ed, contact jjnewsletter@hotmail.com with a brief description of the article's focus.