Ma clique

The Ma clique (zh-tspl|t=馬家軍|s=马家军|p=Mǎ Jiājūn|l=Ma family army) was a family of warlords who ruled the Chinese provinces of Qinghai, Gansu and Ningxia from the 1910's until 1949. The three most prominent warlords were Ma Bufang, Ma Hongkui, and Ma Hongbin, collectively known as the Xibei San Ma (lit. "Three Mas of the Northwest"); other prominent Ma's included Ma Qi, Ma Lin, and Ma Zhongying. The Three Mas took control of the region during the Warlord Era, siding first with the Guominjun and then the Kuomintang; they fought against the Red Army during the Long March and the Japanese during the Second Sino-Japanese War.

During the final stages of the Chinese Civil War, they fought for the Kuomintang side until the communists emerged victorious and established a unified Chinese state (the People's Republic of China) in 1949. Upon the arrival of communist forces, Ma Hongbin defected to the communists. He was named vice-chairman (later restyled vice-governor) of Gansu province. He died in Lanzhou in 1960. Ma Hongkui fled with the Kuomintang to Taiwan. Accused of "frustrating the fulfillment of the military plan" by the Control Yuan, as he failed to defeat the Communist forces in his defense area, he then moved to Los Angeles, in the United States, where he died on January 14, 1970.
Ma Bufang fled to Chongqing then Hong Kong. In the October, Chiang Kai-shek urged him to return to the Northwest to resist PLA, and he fled to Saudi Arabia with more than 200 relatives and subordinates, in the name of hajj.

The Ma's were all ethnic Hui from Northwestern China, distinguished by their adherence to Islam.

ee also

*Warlord Era
*History of the Republic of China

External links

* [http://www.crwflags.com/fotw/flags/cn-xsm.html Xibei San Ma at FOTW]