Capitan China

plural Capitans China

1. historicalA Chinese official, boss, or headman, who had authority over Chinese workers in a foreign nation.

   The "Capitan China" is a personage always met and very much looked up to, on the tin mines all over the Malayan Peninsula.

   1887, Harriet W. Daly, Digging, Squatting, and Pioneering Life in the Northern Territory of South Australia, page 352

   1 more example

   Choa Mah Soo was made Capitan-China in Klias and Mempakul, Pope-Hennessy later claiming that he had "induced the Sultan to restore the old system of "Capitans China" and to treat the Chinese well."

   1970, Nicholas Tarling, Studies in the Social History of China and South-east Asia, page 367