The fifth plenary session of the 20th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China reviewed and adopted the Decision of the CPC Central Committee on Several Major Issues Concerning the Persistent Advancement of Full and Rigorous Party Self-Governance (the Decision). A Farmers’ Daily article carried by The Paper on 11 November 2026 says the Decision stresses thorough investigation of new and hidden forms of corruption, including expected returns, agreed nominee holding, “white gloves,” and the political-business “revolving door.”

What “white gloves” means

The article defines “white gloves” as business people close to state functionaries who “make money” in the foreground while the functionaries help them extensively from behind the scenes and act as “shadow shareholders.” In this arrangement, the business person is in effect the functionary’s “agent,” commonly called a “white glove.”

It says this pattern was clear in the corruption case of Sun Zhigang, former deputy director of the Financial and Economic Affairs Committee of the National People’s Congress and former Party secretary of Guizhou. According to the article, Sun almost never handled the dealings himself and instead operated through several “white gloves.” The investigation found that he used his official power to do favors and gather wealth, and that several close relatives took part. Some problems he pursued himself, some he planned from behind the scenes, and some he knew about but shielded and indulged. His fifth younger brother, Sun Shaowu, was his main “cashier,” the article says.

Methods that keep changing

Besides “white gloves,” the Decision also names three other practices that in recent years have been singled out for focused rectification as new or hidden forms of corruption.

Agreed nominee holding, the article explains, means a state functionary uses the convenience of office to seek benefits for a bribe-giver, the two reach an agreement on the bribe, and they specify that the bribe-giver will hold it for the functionary. If traditional bribe-taking is “delivery on the spot and immediate payment,” agreed nominee holding is “money that does not pass through one’s hands and property that is not handed over,” creating obstacles to proving the offense, stretching out the time before the benefit is realized, and making investigation harder.

Expected returns, it says, use a time lag to turn power in hand into something like an “option” and delay when the benefit is realized. The person does not rush to cash in while in office and only realizes the benefit after leaving the post or retiring.

The political-business “revolving door” refers to Party members, cadres and public employees who, after resigning or retiring, use the influence of their former posts to “switch roles,” take improper jobs at enterprises or intermediary agencies, and seek high pay. The article says this leaves a back door for using power to seek rents, directly undermines fair market competition, and seriously affects Party conduct, government conduct and social mores.

The article notes that earlier lists of these specific methods appeared mostly in deployments or work reports of plenary sessions of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection. Setting them out together in a Central Committee plenum Decision means that dealing with these “cloaks of invisibility” has risen from a special task of the discipline inspection and supervision system to a strategic deployment the whole Party must address together.

Raising anti-corruption “penetrating power”

The article reports that, in an important speech to the fifth plenary session of the 20th Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, Xi Jinping stressed the need to grasp new trends and features of corruption, innovate methods, improve the mechanism for carrying out anti-corruption responsibility, promptly discover, accurately identify and effectively deal with all kinds of corruption, and continuously raise the penetrating power of anti-corruption work.

To do that, it says, it is necessary to grasp the major judgment of the “two stills,” accurately understand the protracted, complex and arduous nature of the anti-corruption struggle, and maintain strategic resolve. It also calls for revealing, beneath complicated outward conduct, the essence of disciplinary and legal violations, analyzing the deeper causes of corruption, and seeing through a “legal disguise” and a “hidden barrier.” It further says general patterns should be drawn from individual cases, common features summarized, and tactics improved. Citing the saying that when vice rises a foot, the right way rises a yard, the article calls for resolutely winning this major struggle against corruption, a major struggle we cannot afford to lose and must not lose.

Original article: The Paper