Taking a guilty plea at face value - in a country with a 99.9 per cent conviction rate - shows either a deep faith in China's prosecutors, or a deep-set belief that power and corruption are inevitably entwined.

To be sure, even those who do not trust the mainland's judicial system may still reckon that a random or politicised purge is better than none at all, as it sends a frightening message to officials who otherwise would be grafting away.

But ultimately, the most effective way to reduce systematic corruption is to establish a strong, reliable and transparent rule of law.

As it happens, the same man who is leading the anti-corruption campaign, President and Communist Party leader Xi Jinping, has initiated a number of judiciary reforms, many aimed at increasing judiciary independence on the provincial level, where judges are appointed by local leaders and thus often under their sway.

Xi has also backed moves to increase judicial transparency; in one expression of this new spirit, foreign diplomats and journalists sat in on a Supreme Court civil case in which a German company accused a Chinese firm of intellectual property theft.

And Xi recently announced that "ruling China by law" will be a key theme of the upcoming party plenum in October. "The rule of law is a must if the country will attain economic growth, clean government, culture prosperity, social justice and sound environment," Xinhua reported.

Does this new focus on a rule of law mean that even the big party leaders being felled by the anti-corruption drive will get a fair trial?

"Absolutely not," says Carl Minzner, a long-time Chinese legal expert from Fordham School of Law. "Such cases are the very last place one should look for signs of Beijing's commitment to due process or judicial reform."

Rather, "the current anti-corruption campaign is being handled through closed-door party channels, with decisions regarding removal of top party officials being guided by political, rather than legal, considerations".

Minzner has argued that China has been going back on reforms that encouraged citizens to use the courts to press for certain rights, including economic ones.

Instead, provincial judges are now being encouraged to "mediate" cases in an extrajudicial manner.

This is certainly better than totally ignoring complainants, but it means there is no legal precedent established for others to press for the same rights.

Meanwhile, for the bigger-fish cases, there has been a return to the Maoist-era show trials, and publicly taped confessions.

Even foreign companies have been tried this way, with Chinese executives of GlaxoSmithKline seen on television confessing to crimes.

It is not uncommon in China's history to simultaneously move forward and backward on reforms.

Stanley Lubman at Berkeley School of Law recently wrote that in its paradoxical way, China is incrementally reforming its legal system, even as it compromises the judiciary's independence in other ways.

Such an interpretation may offer consolation to foreign investors, which recently have expressed concerns that Beijing was unevenly applying its anti-monopoly laws to harass international firms.

Minzner is more cynical. He expects the upcoming plenum will likely show that "legal reform" is just a catchphrase for giving the party more control over the judiciary.

We will see shortly.

Meanwhile, perhaps online commentators should temper their glee when Liu Han is put to death, as expected any day now.

No one can be certain whether Beijing is seriously rooting out corruption, or just offering the angry crowds a few scalps, taken from those who are in the wrong political camp.