> the original chinese text or the english translation never instruct citizen to spy

The translation by China Law Translate [1] of the Chinese text [2] is in agreement with those provided by Google Translate [3], DeepL Translate [4], and Bing Translator [5]. The only differences are trivial: "intelligence efforts" for some (CLT, Bing) vs "intelligence work" for others (Google, DeepL), capitalization of "State" versus plain "state".

Let's go with CLT and quote the whole thing:

Article 7: All organizations and citizens shall support, assist, and cooperate with national intelligence efforts in accordance with law, and shall protect national intelligence work secrets they are aware of.

The State protects individuals and organizations that support, assist, and cooperate with national intelligence efforts.

What does that mean? Keeping in mind that the law was drafted by the Ministry of State Security [6] ("the principal civilian intelligence, security and secret police agency of the People's Republic of China"), let's see how Wikipedia describes that kind of "efforts" or "work" [7]:

An intelligence agency is a government agency responsible for the collection, analysis, and exploitation of information in support of law enforcement, national security, military, public safety, and foreign policy objectives.

Means of information gathering are both overt and covert and may include espionage, communication interception, cryptanalysis, cooperation with other institutions, and evaluation of public sources. The assembly and propagation of this information is known as intelligence analysis or intelligence assessment.

Do you see the word "spy" anywhere in that text? It's only used once on the entire page, in the title of an external link to a popular article about the 17 intelligence agencies which the US sees fit to run. Nobody serious says "spy". But everybody knows what "intelligence work" means.

So, what Article 7 says is that any Chinese citizen or organization must "support, assist, and cooperate" with China's intelligence agencies, which are in the business of collecting, analyzing and exploiting information. And just in case there's some doubt about where that work can be carried out, Article 10 clarifies that "national intelligence work institutions are to use the necessary means, tactics, and channels to carry out intelligence efforts, domestically and abroad".

> You also said 'imply'.

Yes. What's wrong with "imply"?

> If you don't work in law or judiciary in China I think my friends opinion on the matter weighs more.

I have no problem believing that your CCP friends are more knowledgeable about the internal workings of China's police and judiciary than I or just about any external observer; the CCP is intentionally opaque. For the exact same reason, I have an effectively insurmountable problem believing that they can be entirely open with you (assuming that you are not part of the same context) or that you could be entirely open about governance issues in a public forum such as this.

If you are really unwise I suppose you could ask them what's going on with Peng Lifa [8] and his family [9], considering the recent anniversary. (To be clear: I wouldn't, and I certainly wouldn't post in public about it if I were you.)

[1] https://www.chinalawtranslate.com/en/national-intelligence-l...

[2] https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/%E4%B8%AD%E5%8D%8E%E4%BA%BA%E...

[3] https://zh-wikisource-org.translate.goog/wiki/%E4%B8%AD%E5%8...

[4] https://www.deepl.com/en/translator

[5] https://www.bing.com/translator?to=en

[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ministry_of_State_Security_(Ch...

[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_agency

[8] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beijing_Sitong_Bridge_protest

[9] https://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/china-bridge-man-1016...