is like a belligerent drunk talking trash to his increasingly surly bartender.

So Beijing stated our SecDef ‘s planned stopover for meetings in China was inconvenient at the moment. I guess that's what they call being snubbed?

I don’t know politics well, nor plan on entering into foreign affairs, but having some knowledge of martial arts. I've noted people are generally programmed to press an attack without thinking, against all comers, which doesn’t allow much room for observing your opponents natural preferences for attacking. Without being obvious or him noticing, I've learned to allow opponents to strike me while I attack in my normal way.

Carefully watching your opponent’s timing and movements, as well as your own, will often indicate he will attack you in the same way every time.
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These high profile trips and meeting are planned well in advance. We should know how China is going to react by now, and have allowed SecDef Gates trip to have concluded as originally planned, and then had the President make his announcement about going ahead with arms sales to Taiwan.

Nothing new here, just tit-for-tat.

Poor Gates does NOT seem to understand that US arms sales to Taiwan is not the real reason why China does not want to entertain Gates visit to Beijing right now.

Real reason is China does NOT want any US pressure on North Korean sinking of South Korean boat right now. China has already told Japan and South Korea to ‘cool it’ over that incident and this is China’s way of telling US the same thing. US knows all too well that at UN Security Council, China is NOT going to allow any meaningful sanctions against North Korea or even Iran.

China will allow a future Gates visit on its own terms and when it thinks it is beneficial to China. China is not a ‘push over’ like India.

Yes, but Gates is being less than honest here - at least one hopes that's the case, one hopes that Gates and the Obama administration are not just simply being naive here - Taiwan is central to China's larger long term military strategy - China's huge military build up is not specifically about Taiwan, it's about control of the South China sea and the surrounding outer island chain, it's about in many ways replicating Japan's grand strategy from WWII - in short it's about a lot more than a 'disagreement' over Taiwanese independence. What's particularly concerning in this instance is not the arrogance of China in general but the arrogance and possible growing autonomy of the PLA specifically - again, another uncomfortable reminder of WWII era Japan.

D Bacon - you quite obviously have no clue. China's overall strategy is close enough to WWII Japan's that taking note of it is perfectly reasonable; China's build up in A2/AD assets, naval assets, space and cyberspace assets etc etc is huge and consistently underestimated; China has a right to protect its shipping lanes from who exactly? Japanese whaling fleets? The only predicate that justifies China's actions is an expected military confrontation with America or its allies in the western pacific.

Why do you so eagerly support China? Do you really love China or do you just hate the US? Why do you think China needs defending? I am curious, as I do not see a clear motive.

So what if Taiwan is on some territory about some history? The people that live there do not want to be ruled by China. China would oppress them and make them worse off than they are now. Whatever dynasty held what hundreds of years ago, or what the maps in the UN building say, how would that justify China's actions? In general, I just do not see the logic that because A and B share a cultural history, A can do whatever it wants to B, and its fine. If C gets involved, no matter its intentions or actions, it is automatically evil because C is from somewhere else. By that logic, the US would have been the good gut in the Cuban missle crisis even if the USSR was a wonderful democracy of social justice and freedom and the US was an Orwellian nightmare that wanted to eat all of Cuba's babies, because the US and Latin America share similar cultures. I hate that thinking. Cultures dont have rights, people have rights.