“I'm rather pessimistic,” says Fermi Wong, who moved to Britain in 2020. “Hong Kong will not (return to what) we call normal." Government estimates show hundreds of thousands of people quit Hong Kong in the years that followed the handover for a new life overseas -- many citing fears of a future under Beijing's thumb. As the territory celebrates the handover's 25th anniversary on Friday, with citywide posters proclaiming "a new era of stability, prosperity and opportunity", another exodus is under way. Beijing's imposition of a sweeping national security law has helped propel a new wave of emigrants across the world, swelling the ranks of those within the diaspora who feel dispossessed by Chinese rule. It was the security law that prompted Wong, who had worked as an advocate for ethnic minorities in Hong Kong for more than two decades, to leave. Since the law came into force in 2020, critics say the premise of One Country, Two Systems has been comprehensively eroded, and many of the freedoms it promised have been eviscerated. IMAGES AND SOUNDBITES