He rose rapidly during the Cultural Revolution, and was appointed Commander of the PLAAF in 1973 following the Lin Biao incident.

There he read Boris Polevoy's novel Story of a Real Man, based on the life of the Soviet aviator Aleksey Maresyev, a double amputee who overcame his handicap to become a flying ace.

[2] Ma served as Commander of the 21st Air Force Division in Shanghai until 1967, when he transferred to Changchun in the Shenyang Military Region.

When the Gang of Four was overthrown in 1976 at the end of the Cultural Revolution, Ma was promptly relieved of his command, and formally replaced by Zhang Tingfa in the spring of 1977.

[5] However, he was not purged from the Chinese Communist Party,[5] and was allowed to retire in 1984 with the rank of a deputy corps commander.