After his tenure, he would work at the Highway Bureau and eventually settling for sports shooting, accomplished enough to warrant a space to the 1964 Summer Olympics.
Ma was increasingly homesick and critical of the conditions at Taiwan, prompting him and cameraman Chan Jue to defect during the Olympics.
[2] Ma and Chan respectively went to a local overseas Chinese organization and the embassy of the Soviet Union in Tokyo; the Japanese agreed to let them go, but due to difficulties caused by their lack of contact with the People's Republic of China, the duo travelled to Tianjin through a Norwegian vessel to a hero's welcome; they were reunited with their family whom they had abandoned on their retreat in 1949.
[4] Ma was honored and assigned to be the coach of China's sports shooting team, even going back to Japan for a cultural exchange in the 1980s.
[5] He retired in the 1980s after being promoted to vice chairman of the physical education department of Liaoning.