Beijing - Ms Hillary Rodham Clinton led a call yesterday for China to speed up legal reforms while giving greater legal protection to women.
She teamed up with US Secretary of State, Ms Madeleine Albright, to praise China's growing acceptance of the rule of law, while urging greater legal protection for all citizens.
"I was also a professor of law and ran a legal services centre very much like this, and discovered what an important window it is into people's lives and the real operation of the legal system," a solemn First Lady told Chinese lawyers and professors at Beijing's Centre for Women's Law Studies and Legal Services.
"There is no way for a centre to take care of all the clients who need personal help," so the court system must apply more widely the lessons learned from landmark cases won," she said.