Beijing wants Hong Kong to handle Snowden on its own, party newspapers suggest

In a commentary in response to the Snowden case, the People's Daily said yesterday that Chinese were always unwilling to get involved in other people's "mess".

The Communist Party mouthpiece also rejected suggestions by some US politicians that cybersecurity whistle-blower Edward Snowden could be a spy for China, calling it a groundless accusation that had added "a cloud to the clear sky of the Sino-US relationship".

Another party newspaper, the Global Times, said in a commentary yesterday that Hong Kong should follow public opinion in handling the case, not worry about Sino-US relations and "be more spontaneous".

Professor Liu Jianming, a communication studies specialist at Tsinghua University, said both articles suggested that Beijing did not want to get further involved in the case.

"China is taking its usual position of not intervening in other countries' affairs, but it cannot ignore verbal attacks that have twisted the truth," he said.

The People's Daily said "the Prism scandal was America's trouble in the first place", but some US politicians were trying to "create a new link between China and the scandal with their own imagination" by hinting that Snowden was a Chinese spy.