if Western universal values are false, is it enough to oppose them with a particular way of life like China's Confucian 'mainstream ideology'? Don't we need a different universalism, a different project of universal emancipation? The ultimate irony here is that 'socialism with Chinese characteristics' effectively means socialism with a market economy (with capitalist characteristics), i.e., a socialism that fully integrates China into the global market. The universality of global capitalism is left intact - it is silently accepted as the only possible frame, and the project of Confucian harmony is mobilized only in order to keep under control the antagonisms that come from global capitalist dynamics.