[er35826]

I've said it before and I'll say it again: He chose Russia and China because priority #1 when you're running FROM someone, is to not get caught by them. Those were large nations he could (relatively) easily get into, that are not friends with the US and would not immediately turn him over to the US.

I'm sure he would have preferred to run and hide in Switzerland or Canada, or Japan, or any one of a hundred other countries, except that they would have hauled him in and stuck him on a plane/boat/truck back to the US as soon as he was identified.

This is a perfectly reasonable 'not a spy' reason to run to those countries, in case you lacked the imagination to go any further than 'he only went there because he was a spy.'