What a gloriously ignorant or deliberately disingenuous statement. Snowden is wanted for stealing state secrets. That = espionage. If a Chinese agent got caught for doing the same thing he'd be charged with espionage. Espionage has everything to do with the getting not the distributing. If you catch the person leaving the building, meaning the information was never shared at all, you can't go "Oh rats, can't charge him with espionage!" But that doesn't help when we want to do clever word smithing like the above.

For the record treason is a judgement on whether you used the information you stole (espionage) to harm your country. It's actually very telling that he's not charged with treason. The government is saying (today) they don't believe he did set out to hurt his country by simply charging him with stealing state secrets and chosing not to charge him for trying to damage his country with his actions after stealing them.