Ma was placed in charge of the Northeastern Army in Heilongjiang Province during the invasion and ignored orders from the central government not to resist the Japanese.

He became a national hero in China by fighting the unsuccessful but highly symbolic Jiangqiao campaign against the Kwantung Army's advance into Heilongjiang.

He then joined and took command of the guerrilla campaign against Japanese occupation, taking with him large amounts of supplies, funds, and military intelligence.

Ma avoided direct participation in the postwar Chinese Civil War and eventually defected to the Communists, dying a year later in 1950.

Zhang Xueliang telegraphed the Nanjing Government to ask for instructions, and then appointed Ma Zhanshan to act as Governor and Military Commander-in-chief of Heilongjiang Province on October 10, 1931.

[12][13] The Japanese invaders repeatedly demanded to repair the Nen River Bridge, which had been dynamited in earlier civil strife to prevent an advance by a rival Chinese warlord.

Ding Chao and other senior commanders followed Ma's example at the industrial city of Harbin in Jilin province and elsewhere, and his successes inspired the local Chinese to aid or enlist in his forces.

[15] Because of his fame and heroic efforts in resisting the Japanese invasion of Manchuria, Colonel Kenji Doihara offered Ma Zhanshan a huge sum of $3,000,000 in gold to defect to the new Manchukuo Imperial Army.

Ma appointed himself as nominal Commander-in-chief and absorbed the other volunteer armies in the region, commanding a total fighting force of about 300,000 men at its peak strength.

The units under Ma undertook ambushes along the major roads and badly weakened Manchukuo and Japanese troops in several engagements.

In September, Ma Zhanshan arrived in Longmen County and established a relationship with the Heilongjiang National Salvation Army of Su Bingwen.

[14] The China monthly review reported that "the persistence with which the Japanese telegrams reiterate and insist that General Ma Chan-san is dead is little short of comical".

They seized 350 Japanese and Korean hostages and held them for weeks and kidnapped foreigners such as the son of a British general and an American executive's wife.

[24] Other sources do not mention this doubtful participation of Ma Zhanshan in this war, since he was a Commander in Chief of Cavalry in the National Revolutionary Army in China in 1937.

Ma Zhanshan was appointed as Chairman of the Provisional Government of Heilongjiang in August 1940 by the Chinese Communist Party, and held that title in secret to the end of the war.