In 1912, after the Qing Dynasty was overthrown, he accompanied Tatar merchants to Dihua (now Ürümqi) in Xinjiang and worked as an apprentice and store-clerk.

[2] He spoke Tatar, Uyghur, Mandarin Chinese, Russian, Turkish and some Arabic and acted as the interpreter for Yang Zengxin, the leader of Xinjiang at the time.

He returned to Xinjiang in 1933 and held a number of roles in the provincial government including manager of a land development company.

During this time, he met Yu Xiusong, a CCP member and the chairman of the Federation, and began to study the history of the CPC's struggles, as well as its principles and objectives.

[7] In 1937, he was dispatched by the next governor, Sheng Shicai, to the Soviet Union to serve as a consular official in the border district of Zaysan.

In 1946, Shahidi became the vice-chairman of a provincial coalition government formed between the Chinese Nationalists and the revolutionaries who had founded the Second East Turkestan Republic (Second ETR) in the "Three Districts".

[14] He helped stabilize the province's finances, which was ravaged by the spread of inflation throughout Nationalist China, by restoring the local currency.

[2] As a direct result of his diplomatic work, Egypt under President Gamal Abdel Nasser in May 1956 became the first country in Middle East to recognize the PRC and sever ties with the Republic of China on Taiwan.

[22] On 4 November 1956, Shahidi and Hu Yaobang, Guo Moruo helped lead a massive public rally and parade in Beijing with over 400,000 people in Tiananmen Square to support Egypt and denounce Anglo-French imperialism in the Suez Crisis.

[24] In the spring of 1959, he led a delegation to Iraq to support Prime Minister Abd al-Karim Qasim who had overthrown the Iraqi monarchy the previous year and founded a pro-socialist republic.

[30] Shahidi supervised Chinese Muslim participation in the hajj until the Cultural Revolution, when he was accused of being a collaborator and a foreigner, and imprisoned for eight years.