A handwritten greeting card by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is seen after she conducted a web chat with Chinese internet users at the U.S. embassy in Beijing February 22, 2009. Clinton ended her visit to China on Sunday by attending services at a state-sanctioned church, having a conversation with women’s rights activists and doing a brief Web chat.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton ended her visit to China on Sunday by attending services at a state-sanctioned church, having a conversation with women’s rights activists and doing a brief Web chat.

The events on the last day of her one-week Asian tour aimed to highlight Clinton’s commitment to civil and religious rights in a way that would not offend the Chinese government, which resents what it views as interference in its internal affairs. 

"Every society has challenges and problems and issues and obstacles and it’s important that people like all of you continue to raise those and speak out," Clinton said as she met about two dozen women’s rights activists at the U.S. embassy. 

She warmly praised the activists she met, who included legal rights advocates, environmentalists and an 82-year-old doctor, Gao Yaojie, who exposed official complicity in the spread of AIDS in central China at unsanitary, often state-run clinics. 

"Change really does come from individual decisions, many millions of individual decisions, where someone stands up like Dr. Gao and says ‘No, I am not going to be quiet,’" Clinton said. "That’s what we have to encourage."