The Government is being accused of endangering the country's diplomatic and trade ties with China.

It comes as further Snowden papers indicate the GCSB has been collecting intelligence on China's diplomatic communications and looked to tap data between two of its offices in Auckland.

Green Party co-leader Russel Norman says the actions are reckless and could result in retaliation from the Chinese.

"It'll be interesting to see if it's overt or covert. They have enormous capacity to basically slow trade up at the wharfs for example, or whether they do something overt and make a more clear statement."

Labour Party leader Andrew Little says he finds the latter surprising as China is here as a guest and is a country we're working hard to forge closer diplomatic ties with.

"I guess it's that tension between fostering relations with a country but continuing to treat them with suspicion and spy on them accordingly. How you draw that balance I don't know but it just seems at odds with what we're trying to do diplomatically."

Prime Minister John Key is making no specific response to the allegation with his office saying the Government won't respond to claims made from documents stolen by Mr Snowden.

The Prime Minister's office says many of the Snowden documents are old and out of date - it's also suggesting some of the information being released has been made up.