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The impact of national or regional culture on the design and implementation of management control systems has been widely studied over the past two decades. However, only a few studies have considered the impact of one of the more dominant features of Chinese culture, namely Confucianism, on management control systems. More specifically, after reviewing the literature, we illustrate, using the case of a state-owned company located in Beijing, how the same Confucian value can embody different, if not contradictory, influences on management control systems. For example, renqing (humanistic values) can be a factor of social control during the design of a management control system. It can also become a disruptive element during the system-s monitoring phase and a control objective during the results evaluation phase. Thus, some values can have different facets-that sometimes act as a barrier and, sometimes as a facilitator to the implementation of management control systems. Humanistic values can also form an invisible factor of control, reflecting Chinese socialization principles that underlie Confucianism.