Ma Zhongying

Vladimir Petrov, a Soviet NKVD agent posted in Yarkand in 1937, gives a different version of Ma Zhongying's disappearance. In his memoir Empire of Fear, published in 1956 after defection to the West, Petrov describes how Ma was lured from Khotan onto a plane he believed was a Kuomintang flight, but was in fact staffed by Soviet agents who abducted him first to Yarkand NKVD headquarters, where he was forced to issue false orders to his own remnant troops in Khotan that would lead to their defeat, then flown on to Moscow where his fate was not known. There was no voluntary flight to the Soviet Union.

British telegrams from India in 1937 said that Tungans like Ma Zhongying and Ma Hushan had reached an agreement with the Soviets, whom they had fought before, that since the Japanese had begun full-scale warfare with China, the Tungans, led by Ma Zhongying and Ma Hushan, would help Chinese forces battle Japan, and that Ma Zhongying and Ma Hushan would return to Gansu, Ma Zhongying being sent back to Gansu by the Soviets, who had been keeping him in Russia.

Ma and the 36th Division fought the forces of Gov. Jin and the White Russians in the Kumul Rebellion. The KMT wanted Jin removed since he had signed without its approval an arms treaty with the Soviet Union.

Ma used the KMT Blue Sky with a White Sun banners and armbands in his military actions. He himself wore a KMT armband and a New 36th Division uniform to show that he was a legitimate representative of the Chinese government. His troops sang Chinese Muslim marching songs. He himself had a harmonium (pump organ) with him, and spent hours playing Muslim hymns on it. He carried Mauser pistols and liked to quote as his models Genghis Khan, Napoleon, Hindenburg and Zuo Zongtang.

Sven Hedin's truck caravan encountered Ma's forces while he and his New 36th Division were retreating south from the Soviet Invasion of Xinjiang. While Hedin was detained by Ma, he met Gen. Ma Hushan and Kemal Kaya Effendi. Ma's adjutant claimed to Hedin that Ma had the entire region of Tien-shan-nan-lu (southern Xinjiang) under his control and Hedin could pass through safely without any trouble. Hedin did not believe this assertion. Some of Ma's Tungan (Chinese-speaking Muslim) troops attacked Hedin's expedition by shooting at their vehicles.

In 1936 Zhang Guotao's forces crossed the Yellow River in an attempt to expand the Communist base into Xinjiang and make a direct connection with the USSR. Some sources allege that Ma Zhongying enlisted in the Red Army and became a high-ranking special adviser to the proposed Soviet force that was planning to take action, according to Zhang Guotao's forces. Ma Zhongying's tasks were, reportedly, to advise the Soviets on the situation in Xinjiang and to help them negotiate with his cousins Ma Bufang, Ma Hongbin and their families so that these warlords would not hinder Zhang Guotao's forces. However, the Soviet plan did not materialize because Zhang Guotao's communist force was met by a coalition of 100,000 troops assembled by Chiang Kai-Shek from the forces of Ma Bufang's Kuomintang Army from Qinghai, a remnant of Ma Zhongying's forces from Gansu and Ma Hongkui and Ma Hongbin troops from Ningxia. The combined force annihilated Guotao's army. Guotao's own 21,000-man Fourth Red Army collapsed first, followed by Mao Zedong's 8,000-man First Red Army. Not one Chinese communist soldier reached Xinjiang alive.

Nothing more was heard from Ma Zhongying after 1936. There are at least five stories of Ma's end:

Due to his severe abuse and brutality, the Turkis (Uyghurs) and Han Chinese hated the Hui officer Ma Zhongying had placed in charge of Barkul, Western traveller Peter Fleming reported that in 1935 Xinjiang was the only Chinese territory where Japanese agents were not active.

In April 1934, after his forces had stormed Kashgar during the Battle of Kashgar (1934), Ma Zhongying himself arrived in the city and gave a speech at Id Kah Mosque, telling the Uyghurs to be loyal to the Chinese Kuomintang government at Nanjing.

The book "Who's Who in China" erroneously claimed that Ma Zhongying came back from the Soviet Union in 1934 to Tianjin, China, and was residing there that year.

Yulbars Khan asked for Ma Zhongying's help in overthrowing Gov. Jin Shuren after Jin abolished the Kumul Khanate and set off the Kumul Rebellion. Ma fought in Xinjiang for a while, was wounded and returned to Gansu where he forced Mildred Cable, Francesca and Eva French to tend to his wounds. He returned to Xinjiang in the summer of 1933.

A Hui soldier from the New 36th Division called Swedish explorer Sven Hedin a "foreign devil",. During the 1930s, a White Russian driver for Nazi German agent Georg Vasel in Xinjiang was afraid to meet Hui general Ma Zhongying, saying: "You know how the Tungans hate the Russians." Vasel passed the Russian driver off as a German.

Ma Zhongying seized Hezhou and vanquished the forces of Ma Lin, who had been sent to recapture Hezhou from him. However, he was relieved by his commander—who was also his uncle—Ma Ku-chang, for acting without orders to take Hezhou. Ma Zhongying seized Gansu's capital (Lanzhou) from the Guominjun in April 1929 but was eventually defeated and expelled by them.

Ma attended the Whampoa Military Academy in Nanjing in 1929.

During Ma Zhongying's 1928 revolt, a blaze destroyed the Multicolored Mosque. Ma revolted in a period of famine and heavy taxation and seized Hezhou after besieging it. While most local Hui did not participate in the revolt, they did provide supplies and food to his invading army consisting of many conscripted Salars. Zhao Xiping (赵席聘), commander of the 17th division of the National People’s Army, under Feng Yuxiang (an ally of the Hezhou government), retaliated by burning the city, including its twelve mosques.

Ma Zhongying joined a Muslim militia in 1924 when he was 14 years old. He was involved in the rebellion against Feng Yuxiang's Guominjun forces in Gansu, and even fought against his own relatives, including his great-uncle warlord Ma Lin, who had continued to serve the Guominjun. He also massacred Tibetans during the rebellion.

Ma Zhongying, also Ma Chung-ying (traditional Chinese: 馬仲英; simplified Chinese: 马仲英; pinyin: Mǎ Zhòngyīng; Wade–Giles: Ma Chung-ying, Xiao'erjing: مَا جٌ‌یِئٍ; c. 1910 or 1908 – after 1936), nickname Commander Ga (尕司令, lit.youngster commander), was a Hui Chinese Muslim warlord during the Warlord era of China. His birth name was Ma Buying (traditional Chinese: 馬步英; simplified Chinese: 马步英; pinyin: Mǎ Bùyīng; Wade–Giles: Ma Pu-ying). Ma was a warlord of Gansu Province in China during the 1930s. His alliance with the Kuomintang (KMT) brought his predominantly Chinese Muslim troops under the control of the KMT as the New 36th Division (National Revolutionary Army) with Ma Zhongying as its commander. He was ordered to overthrow Jin Shuren, the governor of Xinjiang. After several victories over provincial and White Russian forces, he attempted to expand his territory into southern Xinjiang by launching campaigns from his power base in Gansu, but was stopped by Xinjiang warlord Sheng Shicai with Soviet support in 1934.