Opinion | The best way to handle Snowden's case is to help him move to a third country

On February 06, 2012, Wang Lijun, the former police chief of Chongqing, drove to the US consulate in Chengdu , which immediately triggered a flurry of high-level telephone exchanges between US and Chinese officials.

The details of those conversations to resolve Wang's stay in the consulate have never been made public and both Washington and Beijing were conspicuously quiet over the issue. But it came at a politically sensitive time, just days ahead of the then vice-president Xi Jinping's visit to the United States. That visit, watched closely around the world, was billed as the first opportunity for international audiences to get to know China's future leader.

Thus it was very interesting that on February 7, while Wang was still inside the consulate, Xinhua reported a phone conversation between Xi and his US counterpart, Joe Biden, in which both men promised to work to strengthen bilateral relationships ahead of Xi's visit.

As Xinhua said the phone conversation was initiated at Biden's request, it is impossible to think that the men did not discuss Wang's case, given the timing. Indeed, on the same day, Wang reportedly "left of his own volition" and was taken by national security agents to Beijing, resulting in one of the biggest political crises in recent decades and the downfall of Chongqing party boss Bo Xilai , who was then one of the mainland's rising political stars.

Fast forward to today. Since US whistle-blower Edward Snowden broke cover and announced his presence in Hong Kong last week, Beijing again has remained silent. The foreign ministry spokesperson refused to comment on Snowden's case directly and chose to broadly urge for deeper co-operation over cyber security between the two countries.

Although mightily pleased inwardly, mainland officials were wise to bite their tongues. The explosive revelations by the former NSA contractor about top-secret US surveillance of the global internet was the best evidence of Washington's hypocrisy at a time of its increasing public denunciation of China's state-sponsored cyber hacking operations.