eh, to my knowledge the US gov't hasn't been kidnapping many booksellers in the past decade. And despite a bunch of nasty undemocratic stuff happening in the US, there were a lot of underhanded things going on in recent political events in HK.

If Snowden was in HK with Chinese state intelligence (or more likely, details about party leadership scandals), he would not have been able to leave the country unscathed.