Ma Hongkui

Ma Hongkui (1892–1970) was a Hui Muslim general and politician who inherited his father Ma Fuxiang's army and ruled Ningxia from 1931 to 1949. His government was marked by heavy taxation, conscription and close control; he fought the Japanese and the Communists, and after the Communist victory in 1949 he left China, settling in the United States. He died at Los Angeles on 14 January 1970, and his remains were buried in the Muslim cemetery at Sanzhangli, Taipei. ^{1 2}

There is no Arabic or Urdu article on him; this page rests on the English and Chinese articles, as stated in its sources.

He was the son of General Ma Fuxiang — not of Ma Fulu, as an early brief for this record supposed: both articles state the parentage directly, and Ma Fulu was his uncle, his father's brother. The two articles disagree on his birth day: the English article and Wikidata give 14 March 1892 at Hanjiaji in Linxia County, Gansu, while the Chinese article, citing the official Biographies of Senior Generals of the Republic, gives 9 March 1892. The 14 March date is followed here and the conflict is recorded rather than resolved. His courtesy name was Shaoyun and his milk name Sanyuan. ^{1 2 3}

He rose in his father's Ningxia army and, after Ma Fuxiang's death in 1932, held the province's military and then civil power through the 1930s and 1940s. In the war against Japan his forces defended Ningxia's borders, and in the renewed civil war he held Ningxia for the Nationalist government until the People's Liberation Army approached in 1949, when he handed over, left the province and eventually emigrated to the United States. Contemporary and later accounts describe an authoritarian administration remembered for its levies and exactions. ^{1 2}

In the 1930s and 1940s he cooperated with the Yihewani imam Hu Songshan in founding Sino-Arabic schools in Ningxia. The alliance broke down in 1935, when — after Ma Hongkui arranged Chinese New Year celebrations late in Ramadan — Hu Songshan pronounced takfir on him and had him removed and exiled. The Chinese article also records his own stated position, preserved by Gu Jiegang, that he professed Islam while holding the Hui to be part of the Chinese nation and rejecting a separate Hui nationality, and lists among his posts a directorship of the China Islamic Association and the chairmanship of its Ningxia branch. ^{1 2}

He died at Los Angeles on 14 January 1970. His remains were flown to Taiwan and buried in the Muslim cemetery at Sanzhangli, Taipei, where — the English article adds — his sixth wife had arranged a plot in which he lies with his eldest son and his fourth wife. ^{1 2}

His faith is recorded as unknown. No source read names a school or a Sufi order as his own: the Chinese article describes a Muslim who professed Islam and lists his organisational offices in the China Islamic Association, and the English article records cooperation with, and then a rupture with, the Yihewani imam Hu Songshan. Organisational office, alliance and rupture are not attestation of a personal affiliation, and Wikidata carries no religion value for him. ^{1 2 3}

• The defined source entities cited above, recorded in data/source/.
• Revisions of this article must be dated, and must name the source that changed each fact.