In May 1877, the British government of the Straits Settlements set up the Chinese Protectorate. Five months later, the Qing government established a Chinese consulate in Singapore. What is the literary-historical impact of the rivalry between the Straits Settlements government and the Qing government on matters regarding migrant Chinese labor and customs? Using archival sources such as mining agreements and colonial textbooks, I consider this, as well as the Chinese question in late nineteenth-century Southeast Asia through the wider lens of extractive capitalism and land tenure across Malaya, Sarawak, and Patani.