Chinese families and companies have been rushing to move money out of the country for more than a year amid worries over a slowing national economy, a weakening currency and numerous other problems. The outflow has been expensive — China has spent $1 trillion over the past two and a half years to shore up the value of its currency — and threatens to damage the country’s efforts to help its rising middle class.

In recent months, China has increased its efforts to stanch the flow, considerably tightening enforcement of its strict limits on how much money can move across its borders. The effort appears to be showing success: The most recent data, for February, showed a slight increase in the size of China’s huge holdings of foreign money managed by its currency administrator, one of the rough proxies for the sum of money moving out.

Among its moves, Beijing secretly told banks in late November that any movement of $5 million or more out of the country required special approval. Since then, regulators have also told each bank not to move more money out of the country for clients than they take in. Some banks had been moving up to six times as much money out of the country.

That rule has complicated not only mergers and acquisitions but also the way many global companies move their China-made profits overseas, in the form of dividends. That could put into question whether China is complying with its commitments to the International Monetary Fund, which are part of a broader Chinese effort to increase the profile of the country’s currency.

Foreign executives describe broad difficulties moving money out of China. “On dividend payments, European Union companies experience more tedious paperwork, extended times of processing and the issue of breaking up the dividends over several months if it is a sizable amount,” said Jörg Wuttke, the president of the European Union Chamber of Commerce in China.

Mr. Zhou, China’s central banker, said on Friday that dividends should not be subject to restrictions, but he did not go into details.

China’s $225.4 billion in announced deals for overseas properties last year amounted to more than double 2015’s total, according to Dealogic, a data firm that tracks deals.