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This essay focuses on Lee Teng Hwee and Ho Pao Jin, two "trans-local" activist educational reformers, in order to explore the interaction between changing social networks, governments, and educational reform movements in Shanghai, Singapore, and Malacca at critical moments between the 1880s and 1930s. Lee, as Fudan University President, and Ho, as Shanghai Student Union President, were key actors in the 1919 protest movement. Both were sons of families engaged in trans-regional trade, Lee moving from Batavia to Singapore, America, and Shanghai and Ho moving from Xiamen to Singapore, Shanghai, America, and Malacca. My purpose is to show how the shifting socio-economic networks and political structures and the activities of these educational reformers influenced each other, drawing on and contributing to local and trans-local experience. As these contributors were flexible in adapting to circumstances as they pursued their goals, we should also be flexible in our analysis of them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]