A New Zealand government MP has admitted teaching English to Chinese spies when he was a lecturer at a language institute run by China's spy agency.
But National's Jian Yang says to him they were just students collecting information by monitoring the communications of other countries.
Dr Yang has labelled media reports he was an officer in China's People's Liberation Army and member of the Communist Party as a racist smear campaign, but admits both are true.
A joint investigation by Newsroom and Hong Kong's Financial Times claims New Zealand's Security Intelligence Service has investigated the Chinese-born MP, including interviewing a person about him last year.
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Dr Yang was a student at the People's Liberation Army Air Force Engineering College and the Luoyang language institute, run by the agency responsible for Chinese spying.
After graduating he stayed on at the institute as a lecturer, teaching English.
"If you define those cadets or students as spies, yes, then I was teaching spies," he admitted on Wednesday.
"I don't think so. I just think they are collecting information through communication in China. If you define it that way, then they are spies."
Dr Yang, who has also taught at Australian National University in Canberra and the University of Auckland denied suggestions he had tried to hide his background, which is not mentioned in his National Party biography.
"From the beginning I made it clear to the party that I have this military background, not only to the party but also to other people," he said.
There's no suggestion Dr Yang ever worked as a spy.
National leader Bill English says he was aware early into Dr Yang's political career, which began when he was elected as a list MP in 2011.
"The National Party advised me he was quite up front about his background there. You get to know people as MPs and I think from early on I've been aware that he had military training including military intelligence," he said.
Dr Yang said he had not had any involvement with the Communist Party since leaving China in 1994.
