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