Almost three years ago, when Xi Jinping had just been installed as Chinese president and Barack Obama had begun his second term in office as US president, then state councilor and secretary-general of the Foreign Affairs Leading Group Dai Bingguo asked then US secretary of state Hillary Clinton if she would run for the presidential office in 2016.
At the time Beijing's discontent over the US taking in Chinese civil rights activist Chen Guangcheng had created a barrier to Sino-US strategic and economic talks.
The question from Dai was likely an attempt to lighten the atmosphere at a tense time for relations. Clinton stated flatly that she would not run and she confirmed this the following day in an interview with a US journalist. Clinton stated that nothing would make her want to run, although she was flattered to hear this talked about in Chinese circles.
This is likely the first time that a high-ranking official had asked Clinton about her intentions to have another run at the presidential office since she dropped out of the 2008 Democratic primaries.
At the time Dai asked the question, Clinton was far ahead of Obama in opinion polls and had set a record for the amount of official visits she had made all over the globe. She had earned a reputation for protecting US interests in her time in office. From this point onward Clinton's plan for a presidential run in 2016 was something of an open secret.
Read the full story at Want China Times