Washington: US lawmakers have set out to puncture the claimed altruism of the man whose disclosure of top-secret surveillance programs have caused a storm in Washington, portraying him as a Beijing partisan in continuing US-China cyber wars.

Offering no supporting evidence, figures in the House intelligence committee posed questions that suggested Edward Snowden, an intelligence computer systems administrator who has fled to Hong Kong, was in league with the Chinese government.

Backing: A show of support outside Hong Kong's US consulate. Credit:Reuters

Throwing out a suggestion that Mr Snowden had defected to China proper, as opposed to stopping over in Hong Kong where he says the legal system will provide a tribunal in which he might best challenge a likely American bid for his extradition, committee chairman Mike Rogers told reporters: ''Clearly, we're going to make sure that there's a thorough scrub of what his China connections are.''

Branding the 29-year-old Mr Snowden a ''traitor'', Mr Rogers, a Republican, ticked off the queries: ''We need to ask a lot more questions about his motives, his connections, where he ended up, why he's there, how is he sustaining himself while he is there, and is the Chinese government fully co-operating?''