All the comrades in the Communist Party of China (CPC) should bear in mind that all people are equal before the law, President Hu Jintao said on Friday. [More about Hu's speech]

No one has the privilege to overstep institutions and that no exception should be made in enforcing institutional safeguards, Hu said at a grand gathering marking the 90th founding anniversary of the CPC.

To make Party building more scientific under the new historical conditions, we must place power, Party affairs, and Party members under institutional safeguards, improve democratic centralism, and promote Party building in an institutionalized and standardized way and through due process, said Hu, general secretary of the CPC Central Committee.

The Party should develop intra-Party democracy, promote transparency in Party affairs in an active yet prudent manner, ensure the principal status and democratic rights of Party members, improve the system of Party congresses and the intra-Party electoral system, and improve the mechanism for democratic decision making in the Party, he said.

In March, China's top legislator Wu Bangguo announced the country has established a socialist system of laws with Chinese characteristics, hailing it as a "major milestone" in the history of the development of the country's socialist democratic legal system.

The number of lawyers in China surpassed 150,000 in 2010 from about 3,000 in 1978. That indicates the CPC is striving to eliminate the stubbornest social problem in China : rule by men, said observers.