The US doesn't have the strong hand it had a few weeks ago: catching China redhanded breaking into US servers. That was a bigger trump, until the US got caught

The US doesn't have the strong hand it had a few weeks ago: catching China redhanded breaking into US servers. That was a bigger trump, until the US got caught doing the very same thing. The "you didn't give us Snowden" card isn't going to be as impressive, especially in an international context. With the US treatment of Bradley Manning, that card isn't really a playable one. The humble pie of being outed as hypocrites over hacking - that setback is going to take a while to overcome. It's possible China have no real involvement in this - plausible deniability. Hong Kong is a Special Administrative Region, meaning they are largely left alone in legal matters (except perhaps in exceptional matters - which Snowden, for all the news coverage, isn't).