Espionage is typically conducted in secret. Snowden publicly released the documents and publicly announced his role as the leaker.

I mean i don't know if he is a very naive dude who came up with his own (bad) way of trying to work his way into the chinese good graces...

or if he is a very slick operative and this whole thing is part of a propaganda operation as he defects to China.

All I can say is he stole all kinds of classified documents, revealed some to cause an uproar in the US and paint himself as a hero, immediately flew to the one other super power in the worlds sphere of influence and started advertising he needs help and has a whole lot more documents that would be of keen interest to said super power

How is he advertising such a thing? He specifically said he carefully chose documents that would be in the public interest and not documents that would be a threat to national security.

OR he's just a whistleblower trying to do the right thing for the States.

I've yet to see an opportunity for much personal gain on his part, what's caused you to cast him in that light?

ummmm lets play devils advocate, how much would China pay Snowden for the design documents, specifications, etc for an advanced system for monitoring and extracting an entire nations online and phone habits? keep in mind china fairly recently got busted stealing of cybersitters net nanny software to power their national green dam project.

How much would the propaganda value of China being able to shirk its label as human rights invasion of internet privacy by showing that the USA is doing the same thing be worth? China protecting freedom of expression online...

Snowden is very clearly signalling that he has a lot more secrets, and would like to get some kind of special consideration from china. in particular he seems to be claiming he has a lot of info on US cyber attacks on China, which in no way are 'protecting the US constitution' and in everyway are good old fashion espionage.

... then again wonder if Snowden is going to be the justification for even stronger snooping once he turns out to be a spy.

He has not at all signaled, so far, that he would like any special consideration from China. He has not claimed to have "a lot of info" on US cyber attacks on China. He has said he would let Hong Kong decide whether he deserves protection from extradition.

He has said the U.S. is cyber-attacking China. This is important information for the U.S. public to know when the U.S. government is criticizing China for cyber attacks. How can people hold the executive branch accountable when they're basically being lied to? ("The Chinese are cyber-attacking us, and we only defend...") Is there a primary aggressor in the cyber war? It's an important question.

Suggesting he is a spy for revealing very non-specific information that the Chinese government already knows but the American people do not is ridiculous.

This is still early in the story, but you don't see how Snowden stands to gain by holding inside information about America's Chinese hacking whilst in a territory controlled by China?

Obama's administration had just begun officially condemning China for their relentless cyberattacks in statements made by senior officials. Obama himself was a few days away from a meeting with the Chinese premier in which he was signaling that he was going to openly criticize China for these attacks.

Suddenly, a guy who has had this information for several years decides that NOW is the moment he must step forward with his revelations. He runs off to China (yes, Hong Kong is China), and "confesses" that his agency has been cyberattacking China.

How remarkably convenient this must be for China at this moment, and how remarkably coincidental that he chose China to run away to. Coincidences happen, of course, but I'm not ready to gush about Snowdon's patriotism just yet.

If I was in Snowdon's position I'd be taking every measure possible to protect myself from America. If that is his game it sounds like a sensible strategy, he's certainly not going to be getting any support from his home country.