During Yang Zengxin's reign in Xinjiang, Ma was appointed military commander of Kucha and then Daotai of Kashgar.

His authority extended over all of southern Xinjiang and he commanded several hundred Hui and Han Chinese soldiers.

He steadily lost control over southern Xinjiang, despite Jin Shuren appointing him as Commander in Chief of all Chinese forces in the area, and was panicking.

[12] Ma Shaowu commanded a Han Chinese garrison; his subordinates included Brig.

When the independence of the First East Turkestan Republic was declared the following year, at the Battle of Kashgar (1934) Ma Zhancang and Ma Fuyuan destroyed the Turkic army, massacring over 2,000 Uighurs and attacking the British consulate.

The child was unhurt, the wife slightly wounded and, even though Ma was shot in the legs, he dragged himself into a maize field.

Ma was interviewed by traveler Peter Fleming in 1936, shortly after the assassination attempt.

He wore a long beige silk robe, had a spittoon and spoke in precise Peking speech.

In 1937, during the Xinjiang War (1937), Ma Shaowu was accused by Soviet puppet Sheng Shicai of being part of a "Fascist-Trotskyite" network, including Khoja Niyas Hajji, Ma Hushan, along with other claims, which Sheng Shicai used as an excuse to conduct his own purge in Xinjiang along with Joseph Stalin's Great Purge.