China's new travel rules from Sept 15, and Mark Zuckerberg's $2bn buy may be behind it

China started enforcing a new set of exit and entry rules on September 15, and the headline change is easy to state. Beijing now has explicit legal authority to stop its own citizens from leaving the country if their travel is judged a risk to national industrial or technological security. Premier Li Qiang signed the decree in July, and the State Council said at the time that the regulations standardised procedures and safeguarded national sovereignty, security and development interests.The clearest example of why this matters was written before the rules existed. When Meta agreed to buy the Chinese founded AI agent startup Manus for $2 billion, Beijing blocked the deal, ordered it unwound, and handed exit bans to chief executive Xiao Hong along with other senior management.