[Objective] This research proposes a method to explore the topics of provincial leaders’ public emails, aiming to effectively respond to residents’ demands and provide support for social governance and services. [Methods] First, we retrieved the text message from public emails in 27 provinces and 4 municipalities directly under the Central Government. A total of 106,810 valid items were collected. Then, we applied the LDA modeling method to extract the topics of these emails and learned the public appeals. Finally, we conducted a comparative analysis of these appeals in different provinces and cities to understand the differences in social governance. [Results] The public paid more attention to the livelihood services, social development, education services, health issues, legal services and resource ecology. The public appeals showed significant inter-provincial difference. For example, Shanxi people paid more attention to employment; Jiangxi people attached great importance to travel; Henan people focused on education; Shanghai people cared housing issues; and Guangxi people paid more attention to enterprises. We also built a panoramic view of social concerns and support local governments’ decision making. [Limitations] This study did not comprehensively examined public appeal from multi-channels. More research is needed to optimize the algorithms and analysis methods. [Conclusions] This study could help local government better understand people’s demands or concerns, and improve decision making.