The former has a limited downside, the latter unlimited. Whatever the Central Committee decides happens to you is law with no recourse - execution, disappearing and re-education, etc. - and law enforcement and the courts are just there to justify it after the fact.
It’s clueless to publicly mouth off about the CCP if you’re a high-profile influential Chinese billionaire and therefore a potential threat to the current ruling faction, or some future ruling faction when there’s turnover. Discretion is definitely the better part of valor there.
If the downside is unlimited then you do whatever it takes to win, always.
And if there isn't currently a struggle then you prepare for the next one, constantly.
Or in other words, you only spend a small portion of your total ability and time on the job, because you have to constantly expend effort on protecting your back.
Xi Jinping himself got purged in his youth and spent that time living and working in the countryside and building his ‘man of the common people’ cred, then made it back into the CCP’s favor later. Though Xi was a princeling, his father was one of Mao’s inner circle, so he might have been untouchable and only at risk of exile and not actual execution for that reason, unlike most other CCP members and Chinese people.
And to be fair, US politicians spend most of their time fundraising for their next campaign, so in terms of total ability and time spent on the job it’s probably similar in both systems. But losing a power struggle in the US just means losing your election, and trying again in the next one. In the CCP there’s a wider range of consequences.
1. Jack Ma knows things you don't, and those things made mouthing off seem worthwhile to him. Still, he miscalculated, but not out of sheer cluelessness.
2. You, HN commenter, understand Chinese politics and power better than Jack Ma, a prominent Chinese billionaire. He is clueless.
Doesn't 2 seem a little arrogant to you?
Though I would argue that the explanation requiring the fewest assumptions is not that Ma was being calculating and strategic, but that he just got cocky and said something dumb in the moment. He let all the global feting of his rise from schoolteacher to China's richest man go to his head, made an all-too-human mistake, and said something inadvisable.
He may even have been trying to defend the CCP in that moment, trying to communicate to US audiences that the CCP doesn't need to be feared because it's not scary, and thus he himself didn't fear it. But Xi and the powers that be interpreted it differently, and disappeared him. Which is always a risk in that system, but not in liberal democracies.
See also, Twitter is was not worth $44 billion in 2022.
Missing option (4). If you have billions, sacrificing a lot of wealth and power to do something you want is just another valid option.
See also, sacrificing 20% of your net worth to support "freedom of speech" is a reasonable choice, especially if you are left with an objective fortune.
FWIW I know it’s his right to do this as he owns the platform but it is relevant in the context of “but Elon didn’t do X”
It seems to be supporting Musk's freedom of speech just fine.
Most startups of that era are.
The Weakness of Xi Jinping: How Hubris and Paranoia Threaten China’s Future https://archive.is/d9OsU
Seems like the arch-enemy of communists
But one has to be clueless in order to start a power struggle with Xi. He's not like the old school CCP head at all (not even Mao), he's much more of an all-powerful tyrant like Stalin was. Starting a power struggle against such a ruthless despot is clueless.
Political struggles where commonplace during most of the Mao era, and it wasn't until the end of his reign (in 1969, amidst the cultural revolution) that Mao came to gain complete power over the central committee. (And by that time, he had done most of its harm already)
Two of the most historically important event of the period even happened after Mao lost a power struggle and was trying to get back on his foot: the great march and the cultural revolution.