Over the past three decades, China has shown tremendous interest in the “Singapore model” through its sending of tens of thousands of cadres to Singapore for executive training and graduate education. Although this phenomenon has been studied, no attention has been drawn to the perspectives of those mid-level cadres who took part in the training and what those perspectives might imply. Utilizing a unique dataset of over 1,350 mid-level cadres graduating from the “Mayors’ Class” in Singapore from 1995 to 2016 and follow-up surveys and interviews, this article intends to fill this gap. We found that the most appealing characteristics of the “Singapore model” for these mid-level officials lay in practical governance lessons and their potential transferability rather than in ideologies. This finding challenges conventional wisdom that the most plausible rationale of China's learning from Singapore is political. We also examine Xi Jinping's view of Singapore and its relevance to China's latest national agendas in building a “learning nation” and strengthening the CCP's resilience through anti-corruption and intra-party regeneration. The conclusion places the China–Singapore case within the context of the changing trend of transnational knowledge transfer in the non-Western world.

Although Asia has a long history of governance practice, its modern governance has been disproportionately influenced by the Western models. Given the shifting global political economic landscape and a re-emerging Asia in recent decades, there is an urgent need to explore the potential of Asian models of governance. Could there be an Asian model of governance that is distinct from the Western ones? If so, what are the key characteristics? In conjunction with the special issue, this introduction article attempts to partially answer these questions. Based upon the existing literature and critical reflections, the authors propose a preliminary analytical framework for an emerging Asian model of governance by incorporating two interlinked phenomena: shared cultural, historical norms and trajectories, and intra-regional transnational knowledge transfer. Six articles constituting the special issue are also briefly introduced within this framework, with the aim of contributing to a better understanding of Asian governance experiences and theoretical debates on the evolving modes of public governance.

Using data from the Family and Children Survey of Beijing 2011, the authors constructed a child poverty measure – Child Deprivation Indicators (CDIs) – and explored the relationship between poverty and children's quality of life. The CDIs were found to be a more valid child poverty measure than the conventional measure which is based mainly on individuals' social assistance status. The findings show that deprived children are worse off in terms of living conditions. Furthermore, deprived boys and girls are disadvantaged differently; boys in self‐efficacy and girls in physical development. The findings have four important implications: (i) policy makers should look beyond those on social assistance; (ii) more public funding should be invested in deprived children's informal education and social interaction; (iii) dealing with structural problems relating to parents' socioeconomic status (SES) would be helpful to alleviate child deprivation; (iv) different types of support should be provided to deprived boys and girls for their disadvantages are not identical.