National Party list MP Jian Yang has admitted he previously taught English to students in China so they could monitor communications and collect information.

But he says allegations he was trained by Chinese spies, or was once a spy himself, are a "smear campaign by nameless people" out to damage him and his party before the election.

A story by Newsroom.co.nz on Wednesday claimed Dr Yang studied at an elite Chinese spy school before moving to New Zealand, and had attracted the interest of our Security Intelligence Service (SIS) as a result.

DENISE PIPER/STUFF Yang at Chinese and Korean New Year festivities in Northcote.

Newsroom said Yang's work and political CVs neglected to mention the decade he spent in the People's Liberation Army-Air Force Engineering College, or the Luoyang language institute run by the Third Department, which conducts spying activities for China.

READ MORE: National MP trained by Chinese spies

To have taught at the Air Force Engineering College, Yang would have almost certainly been an officer in Chinese military intelligence and a member of the Communist Party, Newsroom reported.

LAWRENCE SMITH/Stuff Prime Minister Bill English holds a press conference at Fletcher Building's HQ to answer questions concerning National MP Jian Yang's background in the Chinese intelligence services.

But on Wednesday, the National Party released a copy of Yang's CV from 2012, which mentioned his time at the Air Force Engineering College and Luoyang PLA University of Foreign Languages.

Yang said on Wednesday that he was not a spy and had never been a spy. But he did have a background as a civilian, or non-ranking, officer in the Chinese military.

"I was a civilian officer, paid by the military but I had no rank. I was a lecturer."

TIM MURPHY/NEWSROOM National list MP Jian Yang beside party leader Bill English with 'Blue Dragons' supporters at a party policy launch.

Yang said he was admitted to the Air Force Engineering College, now the Air Force Engineering University, in 1978 as an English major. He stayed on after graduation as a lecturer.

While there, Yang taught English and American studies. In his capacity as a lecturer, he taught students how to intercept and decipher communications.

"You need language to understand people. That's why I was teaching English language."

LAWRENCE SMITH/STUFF Prime Minister Bill English answers questions concerning National MP Jian Yang's background.

Yang said his students were simply monitoring communications, rather than carrying out "the physical act of spying".

"If you define those cadets or students as spies, then yes, I was teaching spies."

But Yang said he did not consider those students to be spies, personally. "They were collecting information."