The Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, the Communist Party of China's top discipline watchdog, has started posting the confessions of corrupt officials on its website. The confessions of former officials under arrest or serving sentences, which have become popular among netizens, offer some vivid details of their misdeeds and subtle variations in their thoughts.

The confessions attract readers because it is hard for people to know the true feelings of corrupt officials, which they kept hidden behind their poker faces, and what their life is really like after being ousted from office.

The CCDI intends to deter serving officials from indulging in corrupt activities with the confessions. But it seems that the arrested and under-investigation officials have simply repeated identical statements over and over again.

Irrespective of the magnitude and severity of their misdeeds, their clichéd conclusive confessions are almost the same: "I deeply regret not resisting the lure of money (and women, for some) ... I betrayed my duty to the Party and the people." Some of them have recalled their poor childhood and stressed how difficult it was to become an official, while others have used more words to brag about their political achievements than to reflect on their misdeeds.

The question is: What lessons the officials in service, which the confessions are aimed at deterring, can learn from the formalistic writings?

Real confessions should come from the bottom of one's heart to atone for one's crime, not to beg for sympathy. If the confessions only offer reading materials for curious readers, they cannot deter potential wrongdoers.

Since 2012 dozens of government, Party and military officials at or above the vice-ministerial level, along with their partners in crime, have been sacked or put under investigation for abusing power. The huge number of corrupt officials shows how deep and wide corruption has spread in society. Given the similar content of the corrupt officials' confessions, the key task of the anti-corruption campaign should be to strictly supervise the exercise of power.