Hillary Clinton's wrestle with China: From women's rights to South China Sea, her history with Beijing has spanned decades

With President Xi Jinping readying for a landmark speech at a UN conference last month, Hillary Rodham Clinton pretty much grabbed the mic.

In a message to her 4.4 million Twitter followers, the presidential hopeful called out the Chinese leader for speaking on women's rights after detaining feminists at home. "Shameless," she wrote, signing the missive with an emphatic "-H."

The tone of the tweet, and the furious response it generated, are telling. When it comes to Clinton and China, things are complicated - a dynamic worth exploring heading into the Democratic presidential debate this morning Hong Kong time.

Will Clinton, echoing the "shameless" comment, come out swinging?

History offers some clues. Unlike many of the Republican hopefuls who invoked China but have little experience there, Clinton and China go way back - all the way back to her time as first lady and her speech at the 1995 Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing.

In what CNN recently called her "most iconic moment", the then-first lady delivered what's now considered a landmark speech, declaring "Women's rights are human rights", and without naming China, blasting governments that deny women the right to plan their own families, force abortions or have women sterilised against their will.