What first made me wary of “structure” was neither a clear failure nor a sudden external blow. During a period that still seemed smooth, even relatively secure, I began to see the system I depended on slowing down—without drama, but in a way that made its old pace difficult to recover.
Judged only by my résumé, my later years at Ford, roughly 2016–2020 as China's new-energy vehicle industry took off, offered almost no external reason I “had to change.” Diligence, commitment and responsibility, long proven effective, showed no sign of complete failure. I remember one year-end review in which my manager said I was among the few senior managers still willing to stay up late and make my own presentations. I found that encouraging then. In retrospect, it resembled a gentle, slow-acting poison: it delayed my recognition that the world outside was changing pace.
I had not yet understood that I was merely a “terminal” in a vast system, rather than a “node” capable of connecting outward. A terminal stops working when disconnected from its host. A node carries its network with it.
At the broader level, Ford's new-energy business stood at the intersection of policy, capital, technology and global industrial upgrading. China was at the forefront of global electrification. From organizational structure to business logic, this was a widely accepted, repeatedly validated route. Externally it represented the future; internally it meant stability, scale and longevity. From either a career or risk-management perspective, the choice hardly seemed to need questioning.
That made the initial discomfort especially faint, yet difficult to ignore.
It came neither from workload nor from anxiety over pay or position, but in ordinary moments scarcely worth recording.
At a routine hybrid-vehicle feasibility meeting—the company had begun discussing PHEVs early in those years—the discussion remained rigorous, the logic coherent and the process complete. Yet I felt an unfamiliar impatience. It was not dissatisfaction with the content, but something more basic: these discussions increasingly seemed to maintain an existing system rather than preserve flexibility for an open future. The team's effort had not diminished. It had become harder to convert that effort into forward movement.
The feeling was quiet but persistent. You could still assess each proposal accurately and anticipate outcomes within the established framework. Yet you could also see your judgments surrounded by increasingly conservative assumptions. Every decision reduced risk while narrowing the space in which change could occur. Every “prudent” choice made the system slower, heavier and harder to turn.
What made me reconsider this discomfort was not internal change alone, but another rhythm I was seeing at the same time.
Elsewhere in China's automotive industry, companies with entirely different histories were advancing rapidly: XPeng, NIO and others whose names later disappeared. They were imperfect, sometimes rough, aggressive or inconsistent, but highly tolerant of trial and error and far faster to react than traditional systems. They did not wait for the optimal solution. They kept producing workable solutions and iterating. The century-old industrial system I knew resembled a meticulously maintained giant machine: still reliable, but no longer good at sudden changes of direction. This was not a question of who worked harder. The systems carrying that effort were beginning to return feedback at different speeds.
For the first time, I clearly recognized a long-overlooked fact:
A system does not automatically update its pace merely because you are inside it.
That judgment did not immediately become action, but it established a steady background note. It reminded me that if I compressed all my ability, identity and time into one structure, the real danger would not be an incorrect judgment. It would be having almost no buffer when the structure changed.
It was in this state of mind that work later took me into Southeast Asian markets for longer periods.
Business trips, connections and short stays had long been part of life, but this was different. Bangkok needs no romanticizing. It is chaotic, uneven and hardly polished in its rhythms. Yet those qualities leave considerable room that no single narrative has flattened. When I had to live there, make judgments and coordinate resources rather than simply visit, a long-absent sense of scale returned.
It was an intuitive understanding of “space.” I realized that the question was not whether I still wanted to work hard, but whether that effort could find enough room to be supported.
This was not geographical distance. It was the possibility of different institutions, stages of development and social rhythms existing together. Growth there did not need to establish itself as the “optimal path.” It was a process still unfolding. Experiment, adjustment, failure and recombination could coexist rather than being locked in advance to one standard answer.
Once you experience this, it is difficult to undo.
Returning to Shanghai and my previous working life, I felt the compression with unusual clarity. The environment had not suddenly worsened; my perspective had changed. Meeting rooms and procedures that once felt familiar and safe now seemed too enclosed. Discussion remained rational but accommodated less uncertainty. The system stayed solid but no longer encouraged real exploration. It was not that I lacked the desire to advance. I increasingly felt that more effort would simply be consumed repeatedly inside a shrinking space.
At this stage, I began to redefine “risk.”
For years, risk had meant whether a judgment was correct, a choice too aggressive or a route too far from the mainstream. I now saw that the real warning sign was whether the system had absorbed a person so completely that they could no longer move. When identity, ability and resources are compressed into one structure, its aging produces not a single shock but a continuously intensifying discomfort.
This realization did not send me into radical action. It made me more restrained.
I was not eager to bet on a new future or prove my clarity by rejecting the past. I wanted to recover mobility gradually, without wiping out what I had already accumulated.
This “movement” concerned not just careers but thinking and everyday life.
Around the pandemic, the enforced slowdown gave me an observation window. I cleared the basement to create a lasting buffer for solitary work and reflection. Looking back, it seems like space I had unconsciously reserved for movement.
At the same time, the real contrast began to emerge between people.
People living in the same city and described as belonging to the same middle class were receiving entirely different signals from life depending on their professional backgrounds. Some remained supported by stable organizations and cautiously optimistic. Others quickly felt income separate from security and were forced into a state of continual self-depletion. The difference was not effort, but whether the structures they relied on still worked.
I began to understand that the capacity to withstand change often depends less on willpower than on whether one has left room for it.
Returning to work, I gradually saw that what needed adjusting was not a particular role or decision, but my relationship with the system. Remaining in a large institution was not wrong. Letting it define every possibility was. Experience in new energy, international business and cross-regional collaboration would not automatically become security unless organized into a structure that could be transferred and recombined.
By then, one thing was clear:
When a system begins to age, remaining still turns supposed “prudence” into greater inertia when change arrives.
The meaning of “moving forward” quietly changed.
It no longer meant acceleration, expansion or ever more definite goals. It meant a continuing effort to remain mobile: keeping myself able to turn without disowning the past.
This was neither retreat nor escape.
It was a way to preserve freedom of action while the world rearranged itself.
The next question was no longer whether to acknowledge the change, but how to leave room for uncertainty.
This was not a radical choice. Once diligence no longer automatically produced better outcomes, it became a necessary structural defense. I did not intend to stop working hard. I had begun to question whether hard work alone could still pass through rules being rewritten around it.