Critics predicted freed orphans would return to native villages and destitution.

Evidence

The notion that children would develop a taste for agriculture and take pride and pleasure in their new fatherland struck him as equally preposterous: “But no, this is not what will happen. They would use their freedom to return to their native places. There they would be without any help in strange surroundings. The young women would service the Chinese and Europeans, the boys would end up in jail.” In short, they would fall back into the destitute conditions from which they had come. — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 785