Beijing’s desire to extend its influence across the world has led to hundreds of high-profile Kiwis and their families being profiled on a Chinese intelligence firm’s database.

The Chinese state-linked firm, Zhenhua Data, has been exposed as aggregating mostly publicly sourced data of more than 2 million people across the world, which experts say an unsurprising development which shows China’s global ambitions.

The more than 730 Kiwis profiled in the “Overseas Key Individuals Database” include Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s mother Laurell, father Ross and sister Louise, Cabinet ministers, former prime minister Sir John Key’s son Max, and sportswoman Barbara Kendall.

Senior public servants and diplomats, the chief of defence, a former navy intelligence commander, and high-ranking judges are found on the list, obtained by Stuff.

The Government has largely been silent on the revelations, which have made headlines across the world. Ardern has declined to comment on “security matters” and Foreign Minister Winston Peters said the leak of the database "underlines" the importance guarding online privacy.

"There are malicious actors out there seeking to profit from trafficking private information and people need to protect themselves," Peters said, in a statement.

Such an effort to gather data on Kiwis was unlikely to damage New Zealand’s relationship with China.

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University of Auckland senior lecturer in Chinese politics, Dr Stephen Noakes​, said the revelations were “unsurprising” and unlikely to have a foreign relations impact unless New Zealand was to respond through withdrawing from commercial trade – which would not happen.

“It would be incredibly foolish for we as New Zealanders to believe that we’re in no way part of that,” Noakes said.

He believed the size of the database suggested Zhenhua Data was a “pretty significant enterprise”, and the focus on “officeholders or office seekers” aligned with China’s attempts to influence through political party connections and local government politicians.

“It’s long been the case that details files are kept on people by the Chinese government. What is different though is its capacity to do this on such a huge scale around the world.”

Such intelligence would be considered useful to protect China’s interests and “project Chinese power across the world, by whatever means”, he said.

Security analyst Paul Buchanan said the database appeared to be a “crude” effort to catch up to the mass data gathering capabilities of Western intelligence nations.

“The fact that you’re targeting people like Max Key, that’s puerile and salacious stuff.”

The interest in husbands, wives and children of influential Kiwis showed the intent to seek out “vulnerabilities” to exploit, he believed.

“The elite in this country is so small, that everybody knows everybody … If you do serious network analysis on anybody you can find two or three degrees of separation between a person and someone in China’s national interest.

“This list is a first cut, this is like a rough draft, and now they will use the technologies available to them to whittle it down.”

Those on the list were given the labels “politically exposed person” or “relatives or close associate”. Many on the list have a current public profile, others have ended their public careers as much as a decade ago.

No private information appears to have been collected on New Zealanders, and many profiled in the list are simply named, with little more detail.

New Zealand’s communications intelligence agency, the Government Security Communications Bureau (GCSB), did not respond to a request for comment on Tuesday.

The intelligence agency has previously pushed back at claims it conducts broad data surveillance. GCSB Director-General Andrew Hampton told the Institute of International Affairs in an August speech that: "We do not undertake 'mass surveillance'.

"We often need to collect a larger set of communications ... What is key is that we have robust policies and process in place to manage and discard all the irrelevant information that makes up the 'haystack', retaining only that information – or the 'needle' - that is relevant to the intelligence we produce.”

Zhenhua Data, which describes itself as an open source data intelligence focused on “the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation”, has not responded to a request for comment.

The company claims to have started in September 2017, and was seeking various employees including customer sales reps to sell services to “party, government and military”, and a writer that could “grasp all the information of the propaganda object”.

The database seen by Stuff equates to roughly 10 per cent of the total database the company had collated. It was leaked to American academic Associate Professor Chris Balding, an expert on China, who then passed the material to Canberra-based cybersecurity firm Internet 2.0.

Internet 2.0 co-founder Robert Potter told Stuff that Zhenhua Data had claimed to have profiles on 2.4 million people in its system, however much of the database was corrupted and irretrievable when obtained by his company.

Potter said both China’s offensive intelligence capability, such as hacking, and collection operations are done by third party contractors, which work on behalf of the government.

“In this case, there are a whole range of companies that Zhenhua claims to be partnered with. All of those companies are reasonably prominent in the intelligence and military contracting space in China.”

Potter said most countries would not invest in efforts to create such massive databases, but such data could be used to try to influence countries.

“If you can profile the human terrain of a country, and identify who the influencers are, you can have a disproportionate impact on the opinion in the country.”

The Chinese Embassy did not respond to a request for comment on Tuesday.

The targeted: concerned, unsurprised

“As the Chief of Defence Force, who visits China from time to time for military to military talks, I would not be surprised that the PLA has information on who I am and what I do.” – Kevin Short, chief of defence

“It is actually a little disconcerting … My children don’t necessarily share my politics, so it would be really disconcerting to know that if your children were on such lists, without understanding why the people would want them there.” – Tracey Martin, Children’s Minister and NZ First MP

“China is New Zealand's biggest trading partner, so I won't be the only New Zealander on the list, because anybody that's seriously involved in New Zealand business is doing business with China.” – Ruth Richardson, director of Synlait Milk and Bank of China (NZ)

“I think myself and other political colleagues and military colleagues around the world have been surprised by just the sheer scale of this, but seeing as I’ve been fairly vocally challenging what the CCP has been doing lately, I'm not surprised that my name’s on it.” – Simon O’Connor, National MP

“I don’t know whether to be appalled or flattered. I think they probably have bigger fish to worry about. Other than that I think it’s hilarious. I don’t think I have anything to hide from the Chinese government, maybe I won’t go there for a while. But, how fascinating? Do they know I love Chinese food?” – Nicola Young, Wellington city councillor