Snowden was going to Ecuador only after he went public, because at that point it was about politics, not black ops. A little-known individual can be easily taken out in US-friendly countries (see CIA "extraordinary renditions"), that's the threat he neutralized by being in Hong-Kong -- which is not just "China", it's a very complex country with a separate political system where both China and China's enemies have to tread carefully; by saying "he went to China" you're just pushing your own frame -- but then again, you already know that, don't you?

It's an entirely different proposition to kidnap an "enemy of the state" from an embassy than it is to kidnap one from an entire country.