超越认知偏蔽，适应历史变局！Transformation, Not Change: Piercing Cognitive Blind Spots to Embrace Historical Shifts!

Transformation is not Change—Don’t Play Clever Tricks
— In Response to Brother Zhanjun’s “Travel Observations in America #847” and My Resonance

Archer Hong Qian
May 25, 2025, ILUNION Hotels 311, Barcelona

Brother Zhanjun’s “Travel Observations in America #847” is written with sincerity. And sincerity can cut through emotional labels, surpassing the polarized narratives of “pro-Trump,” “anti-Trump,” “Trump fans,” or “Trump haters.”

What’s more encouraging is that in Observation 847, Trump’s six constructive shocks to the U.S. are compared with China’s so-called “gradual reform,” thereby revealing — at the level of thinking — the essential difference between Transformation and Change.

This is not an ordinary travelogue — it’s a breakthrough insight that clears away the fog!

This difference, viewed from a philosophical and historical dimension, is by no means trivial.

Take China’s reform and the Cultural Revolution, for example — excuse me, I’ve long referred to them as a form of “dual-revolution thinking.” Though the Cultural Revolution sounded grand with its title, “Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution,” its substance was merely a Change aimed at consolidating Maoist privilege — not a Transformation. Its failure was embedded in its very genetic code.

Likewise, the 43rd and 44th U.S. President Barack Obama once campaigned under the banner of “Change.” But in his eight years of governance, he not only failed to resolve the deindustrialization and rust-belt devastation brought by the collusion between Wall Street capital and Chinese privilege, he even further deepened the suffering of the American middle class — ultimately provoking the nationwide rage of “Occupy Wall Street.”

In other words, it wasn’t just the “silent rednecks” and the tragedy of the “hillbilly elegy” — even the spindle-shaped middle class and young professionals in the cities became infuriated. The founding principle of the U.S. Constitution — “We the People” — was, in effect, hollowed out and drained by elite capital, just as “serving the people” in China morphed into “serving RMB”!

This is what I have repeatedly called the collapse of the Globalization 2.0 mutual-harm mechanism — and it marks the historical moment calling for true Transformation! (See my article “China Urgently Needs Transformation, Not More Change!”)

By contrast, though America is rife with problems, it is still America. And history’s gift was to bring forth a “bull in the china shop” who dared to smash through the walls of political correctness — the 45th and 47th U.S. President Donald J. Trump.

Trump is not engaging in some marketing stunt of “anti-establishment sentiment.” He genuinely embraces and practices the “City upon a Hill” belief articulated by Winthrop and Reagan.

What he seeks to restore is not a narrow-minded slogan of “America First,” but to reinstate “We the People” as the foundation of the constitutional system — to revive each individual’s self-organizing connective power of life, and to reestablish a human and international value ethic of:
“Live and let live; don’t be evil and let evil be.”

Put simply: no man is an island. Every living being — individual, group, community, or nation — must become “salt and light” in the world. Each must “first set one’s own house in order,” thereby embodying the principles of:
“Appreciate your own beauty, respect the beauty of others, seek harmony in diversity, and co-thrive in symbiosis.”

This is precisely the social-structural Transformation advocated by the philosophy of Intersubjective Symbiosism.
Not superficial patchwork.
Not old medicine in new bottles.
But a fundamental leap — from value mechanism, lifestyle, and national governance all the way to the reordering of global civilization.

And such a leap?
Of course it shakes the heavens and the earth!

But this shaking is not the destructive reset of violent revolution — it is a rebuilding and rebalancing born of civilizational introspection.

Globalization 3.0 is already on the way.

And America will set the precedent. All other nations, under the primary premise of “setting their own structural house in order,” must either enter the game — or be left out!

I say this in all seriousness:
President Trump’s seriousness far surpasses that of all those politicians who only play clever tricks.

He’s so serious that even in every White House Cabinet meeting, he insists on not putting the light under a bushel — refusing to engage in “black-box operations.”

In today’s world — where politicians are actors and media the stage — isn’t that a rare and refreshing counter-current?

Does he know that such seriousness will cost him political capital and personal reputation? I can’t say for sure.

But I choose to believe — with trust and conviction — that he knows.
And that he acts in the name and responsibility of the presidency —
Knowing it may be impossible, yet doing it anyway.

So I say:
If Trump succeeds,
Whoever mocks him as a fool or tries to outplay him,
Will pay a real price—
First, the price of cognitive misjudgment,
Then, the price in actual accounts,
And ultimately, the price of being out of the game in terms of true vision and scale.