The Chinese government has issued a new decree, according to which both local and foreign citizens might face hurdles to leave the world’s second largest economy.

The State Council’s 19-article Regulations on Exit-Entry Administration, known as Decree No 841, took effect on 15 September, Human Rights Watch reports.

The new decree restricts nationals and non-nationals from leaving China for a range of ill-defined reasons of national security and risk. However, under international human rights law, any legal restrictions on leaving a country must be necessary and proportionate for legitimate aims.

Many provisions of Decree No 841 consolidate exit restrictions in China’s Exit and Entry Administration Law, the Passport Law, and other regulations. Article 12(5) of the Exit and Entry Administration Law, for instance, broadly allows the authorities to prohibit citizens who “may endanger national security or interests” from leaving the country.

However, the new decree appears to further integrate immigration decisions with a tightening national security regulatory framework.

Article 2 of the decree authorises immigration authorities, “when necessary,” to “dissuade” citizens from traveling to “high-risk” countries or regions when processing travel document applications or at border controls.

The decree does not define the criteria for “high-risk” or the standard for when dissuasion becomes “necessary,” leaving decisions to relevant departments’ discretion. Article 3 states that anyone applying to leave China must show that their reasons are “truthful and lawful,” without defining “lawful” travel purposes or specifying what evidence is sufficient.

Article 6 states that people barred from leaving China must ordinarily be notified “in writing of the facts, reasons, legal basis, and available remedies for the ban,” but allows authorities to withhold notice “if disclosure may affect national security or criminal investigations.”

In addition, Article 4 allows administrative authorities to bar nationals from leaving the country when they “violate export control, technology import and export administration…in a manner that may endanger national industrial or technological security.”

An official explanation of the new rules says that this is to combat “illegal transfer of technology abroad.”

Article 5 also permits the authorities to bar foreigners from leaving the country if they are blacklisted on “the countermeasures list, unreliable entity list, [or] malicious entity list” for having “endangered China’s national sovereignty” and other vaguely defined actions.