Illustration: Liu Rui/GT

Hillary Clinton's announcement that she was entering the presidential election on Sunday was hardly a surprise. She had been preparing for this moment for years and had not tried hard to hide her ambition. What's equally clear is that Clinton won't be nice to China, at least during her campaign.

China has become a fixed topic in US elections at state and federal level in recent years. Most of the sound bites are negative. And in many elections, candidates blame each other for being too soft on China.

A Washington Post editorial during the 2012 presidential election explained the reason wittily: "It's an iron law of US politics: You can't go wrong bashing China. Polls show the public believes that the US is losing jobs due to unfair economic competition from abroad, especially from China. And so, every four years, presidential candidates fall all over themselves promising to get tough on imports."

Sometimes the Sinophobia can be stretched to an insane level.

In 2013, when the now Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell was campaigning for re-election in Kentucky, his wife Elaine Chao, the Taiwan-born former secretary of labor in George W. Bush's administration, was attacked by supporters of his rival for being a "Chinese wife" who prompted her husband to "create jobs for China."

Clinton doesn't want to be seen as "soft" on China. In her 2014 memoir Hard Choices, she called on other Asian countries to form an alliance so they could collectively stand up to China. She also criticized China's censorship. She mentioned a confrontation with a Chinese leader about Tibet.

And she devoted a whole chapter to how the Americans helped Chen Guangcheng, the blind activist who went to the US Embassy in Beijing and then was allowed to leave China for asylum in the US.

The attacks have continued. Clinton recently used her Twitter account to criticize China for detaining five feminist activists.

But even this "tough on China" tone doesn't seem to have convinced her political opponents or even some of the people on her side.

The alliance among smaller Asian countries she hoped to see is at best weak. And now it could be further dissolved with the establishment of the China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. The "James Bond-style activity" of Chen's American saviors described in her book doesn't fit entirely with Chen's own account in his newly published autobiography in which he blamed the US for not fulfilling its promises to him.

And the thorniest issue Clinton faces might be money.

According to joint research of the Washington Examiner and watchdog Judicial Watch, during Clinton's tenure as secretary of state, her husband, former president Bill Clinton, made $48 million from foreign countries for giving 215 speeches, including $1.7 million for giving four speeches in China or to Chinese-sponsored entities in the US. In addition, entities that have close ties to China donated between $750,000 to $1.75 million and the Clinton Foundation, the family's charitable organization.

Clinton resigned from the board of the family foundation right after Sunday's announcement to avoid conflicts of interest. Still, her opponents will not easily let go of the opportunity to question her ethics.

What may also be brought up in the process is Clinton's once close relationship to Chinese-American fundraiser Norman Hsu whose 2007 arrest for illegal fundraising prompted her to return $850,000 in campaign donations he helped to raise. Hsu was later indicted for fundraising fraud.

In 1996, the Democratic National Committee also returned $360,000 in donations raised by questionable Taiwan-born fundraiser Johnny Chung for Bill Clinton's reelection campaign. Chung said he got some money from the mainland, which denied the connection.

Clinton's campaign will reportedly cost $2.5 billion. The figure has already raised many eyebrows. There is no doubt Clinton has the ability to raise whatever she needs without crossing the line. But the astronomical spending will likely bring up all the money-related questions and memories and mean that Clinton has an incentive to keep her distance from China.

Maybe. Clinton should keep in mind a warning from Henry Paulson. When asked at an event at the Asian Society on Monday what he'd like to hear the presidential candidates say about China, the former US treasury secretary quipped: "I'd like them to say as little as possible."