3 Four Great Horses

One might say that Chinghai, Ninghsia, and northern Kansu were the prototype of that fantasia of Swift's, the land of the Houyhnhnms, for they were ruled as the satrapy of Four Great Horses whose fame was widespread in China. Over the areas mentioned power was divided (before the Reds began edging the Houyhnhnms out of considerable portions of their domain) by a family of Mohammedan generals named Ma——the Messrs. Ma Hung-kuei, Ma Hung-ping, Ma Pu-fang, and Ma Pu-ch'ing. And this particular Ma means horse.^[*]

Ma Hung-kuei was governor of Ninghsia, and his cousin, Ma Hung-ping, former governor of the same province, was now ruler of a shifting fiefdom in northern Kansu. They were distantly related to Ma Pu-fang, many-wived son of the famous Mohammedan leader Ma Keh-chin. Ma Pu-fang inherited his father's toga and in 1937 became the Nanking-appointed Pacification Commissioner of that province, while his brother, Ma Pu-ch'ing, helped out in Chinghai and in addition ruled the great Kansu panhandle which in the west separated Chinghai from Ninghsia. For a decade this distant country had been run like a medieval sultanate by the Ma family, with some assistance from an Allah of their own.

Two of the Great Horses claimed to be nobles, descendants of a Mohammedan aristocracy which sometimes played a decisive role in the history of China's Northwest. The brothers Ma, like many Moslems in China, had Turkish blood in them. As early as the sixth century a race which we now know as the Turks had become powerful enough on China's northwest frontier to make important demands on the monarchs of the plains. In a couple of centuries they had built up an empire extending from eastern Siberia across part of Mongolia and into Central Asia. Gradually they filtered southward, and by the seventh century their Great Khan was received almost as an equal at the Court of Yang Ti, last Emperor of the Sui Dynasty. It was this same Turkish Khan who helped the half-Turkish General Li Yuan overthrow the Emperor Yang Ti and establish the celebrated T'ang Dynasty, which for three centuries reigned over Eastern Asia from Ch'ang An (now Sianfu)——then perhaps the most cultured capital on earth.

Mohammedan mosques had already been built in Canton by seafaring Arab traders before the middle of the seventh century. With the advent of the tolerant T'ang power the religion rapidly penetrated by land routes through the Turks of the Northwest. Mullahs, traders, embassies, and warriors brought it from Persia, Arabia, and Turkestan, and the T'ang emperors formed close ties with the caliphates to the west. Especially in the ninth century, when vast hordes of Ouigour Turks (whose great leader Seljuk had not yet been born) were summoned to the aid of the T'ang Court to suppress rebellion, Islamism entrenched itself in China. Following their success, many of the Ouigours were rewarded with titles and great estates and settled in the Northwest and in Szechuan and Yunnan.

Over a period of centuries the Mohammedans stoutly resisted Chinese absorption, but gradually lost their Turkish culture, adopted much that was Chinese, and became more or less submissive to Chinese law. Yet in the nineteenth century they were still powerful enough to make two great bids for power：one when Tu Wei-hsiu for a time set up a kingdom in Yunnan and proclaimed himself Sultan Suleiman; and the last, in 1864, when Mohammedans seized control of all the Northwest and even invaded Hupeh. The latter rebellion was put down after a campaign lasting eleven years. At that time of waning Manchu power the able Chinese General Tso Tsung-t'ang astounded the world by recapturing Hupeh, Shensi, Kansu, and eastern Tibet, finally leading his victorious army across the desert roads of Turkestan, where he re-established Chinese power on that far frontier in Central Asia.

Since then no single leader had been able to unite the Moslems of China in a successful struggle for independence, but there had been sporadic uprisings against Chinese rule, with savage and bloody massacres on both sides. The most serious recent rebellion occurred in 1928, when General Feng Yu-hsiang was warlord of the Northwest. It was under Feng that the Wu-Ma, or "Five Ma, "^[*] combination acquired much of its influence and secured the nucleus of its present wealth and power.

Although theoretically the Chinese considered the Hui or Moslem people one of the five great races of China.^[**] most Chinese seemed to deny Moslem racial separateness, claiming that they had been Sinicized. In practice, the Kuomintang decidedly followed a policy of absorption, even more direct (though perhaps less successful) than that pursued toward the Mongols. The Chinese official attitude toward the Mohammedans seemed to be that they were a "religious minority"but not a "national minority."However, it was quite evident to anyone who saw them in their own domain in the Northwest that their claims to racial unity and the right to nationhood as a people were not without substantial basis in fact and history.

The Mohammedans of China were said to number about 20, 000, 000, and of these at least half were concentrated in the provinces of Shensi, Kansu, Ninghsia, Szechuan, Chinghai, and Sinkiang. In many districts——particularly in Kansu and Chinghai——they were a majority, and in some large areas outnumbered Chinese as much as ten to one. Generally their religious orthodoxy seemed to vary according to their strength of numbers in a given spot, but in the dominantly Mohammedan region of northern Kansu and southern Ninghsia the atmosphere was distinctly that of an Islamic country.

It could be said that the Mohammedans were the largest community left in China among whom religious leaders were the real arbiters of temporal as well as spiritual life, with religion a deciding factor in their culture, politics, and economy. Mohammedan society revolved round the men-huang and the ahun (ameer and mullah), and their knowledge of the Koran and of Turkish or Arabic (scant as it usually was) provided the sources of authority. Mohammedans in the Northwest prayed daily in the hundreds of well-kept mosques, observed Mohammedan feast days, fast days, and marriage and funeral ceremonies, rejected pork, and were offended by the presence of pigs and dogs. The pilgrimage to Mecca was an ambition frequently realized by rich men and ahuns, who thereby strengthened their political and economic power. To many of them pan-Islamism rather than pan-Hanism was an ideal.

Chinese cultural influence was nevertheless very marked. Moslems dressed like Chinese (except for round white caps or ceremonial fezzes worn by the men and white turbans by the women) and all spoke Chinese as the language of daily life (although many knew a few words from the Koran). While markedly Turkish features were common among them, the physiognomy of the majority was hardly distinguishable from that of the Chinese, with whom they had for centuries intermarried. Because of their law that any Chinese who married a Mohammedan must not only adopt the faith but also be adopted into a Mohammedan family, cutting away from his or her own kinsmen, the children of mixed marriages tended to grow up regarding themselves as a species different from their Chinese relatives.

The struggle of three sects among the Chinese Moslems somewhat weakened their unity, and created a convenient alignment for the Chinese Communists to work among them. The three sects were simply the Old, New, and Modern^[*] schools. Old and New had formed a kind of "united front"of their own to oppose the heretical Modern school. The latter nominally advocated giving up many of the ceremonies and customs of Mohammedanism and embracing "science, "but its real objectives were evidently to destroy the temporal power of the mullahs, which the Four Mas found inconvenient. Since it was supported by the Kuomintang, many Mohammedans believed the, Modern school aimed at a so-called "pan-Hanism"——absorption of the national minorities by the Chinese. In the Northwest the Four Mas were leaders of the Modern school. Around them they grouped their own satellites, bureaucrats, and wealthy landowners and cattle barons upon whom their regime depended. And yet the Great Horses were not precisely the men one would expect to lead a reform movement in religion.

Take Ma Hung-kuei, probably the richest and strongest of the quartet. He had numerous wives, was said to own about 60 per cent of the property of Ninghsia city, and had made a fortune in millions from opium, salt, furs, taxes, and his own paper currency. Still, he proved himself modern enough in one sense when he chose his famous "picture bride."Importing a secretary from Shanghai, he had him gather photographs of eligible educated beauties and made his choice. The price was fixed at $50, 000. Old Ma hired an airplane, flew out of the northern dust clouds to Soochow, where he swooped up the latest addition to his harem——a graduate of Soochow Christian University——and then swept back again to Ninghsia like an Aladdin on his carpet, amid a blaze of publicity. That news was well reported by the Kuomintang press at the time, as were some of the "death and taxes"data mentioned below.

A government bulletin published in Ninghsia listed the following taxes collected in that province by General Ma：sales, domestic animals, camels, salt carrying, salt consumption, opium lamps, sheep, merchants, porters, pigeons, land, middlemen, food, special food, additional land, wood, coal, skins, slaughter, boats, irrigation, millstones, houses, wood, milling, scales, ceremonies, tobacco, wine, stamp, marriage, and vegetables.^[*] While this did not exhaust the inventory of petty taxes collected, it was enough to suggest that people had relatively little to fear from the Reds.

Ma Hung-kuei's method of salt distribution was unique. Salt was not only a monopoly, every person was required to buy half a pound per month, whether he could use it or not. He was not allowed to resell; private trade in salt was punishable by whipping or (according to Mohammedan Reds) even death. Other measures against which the inhabitants protested were the collection of a 30-per-cent tax on the sale of a sheep, cow, or mule, a 25-cent tax on the ownership of a sheep, a dollar tax for the slaughter of a pig, and a 40-cent tax on the sale of a bushel of wheat.

Excessive taxation and indebtedness had forced many farmers to sell all their cattle and abandon their lands. Great areas had been bought up by officials, tax collectors, and lenders at very cheap rates, but much of it remained wasteland because no tenants could be found to work under the tax burden and rents imposed. The concentration of land, cattle, and capital was accelerating and there was a big increase in hired farm laborers. In one district investigated it was found that over 70 per cent of the farmers were in debt, and about 60 per cent were living on food bought on credit.^[**] In the same district 5 per cent of the people reportedly owned from 100 to 200 mou of land, twenty to fifty camels, twenty to forty cows, five to ten horses, five to ten carts, and had from $1, 000 to $2, 000 in trading capital, while at the same time about 60 per cent of the population had less than 15 mou of land, no livestock other than one or two donkeys, and an average indebtedness of $35 and 366 pounds of grain——much more than the average value of their land.

According to the Communist press, Ma Hung-kuei was suspected of intriguing for Japanese support against the Reds. A Japanese military mission had been established in Ninghsia city, and General Ma had given them permission to build an airfield north of the city, in the Alashan Mongol territory.^[‡] Some of the Moslems and Mongols feared an actual armed Japanese invasion.

Such was the picture, as the Reds saw it, which encouraged them to believe that they could "stir up a great wind"that could bring the Ma brothers' empire toppling in ruins. Ma's troops might have had little interest in fighting, but it still remained for the Communists to overcome the Moslems' aversion to cooperating with Chinese, and to offer them a suitable program. This the Reds were trying hard to do, for the strategic significance of the Mohammedan areas was manifest. They occupied a wide belt in the Northwest which dominated the roads to Sinkiang and Outer Mongolia——and direct contact with Soviet Russia. As the Communists themselves saw it：

"There are more than ten million Mohammedans in the Northwest occupying an extremely important position. Our present mission and responsibility is to defend the Northwest and to create an anti-Japanese base in these five provinces, so that we can more powerfully lead the anti-Japanese movement of the whole country and work for an immediate war against Japan. At the same time, in the development of our situation we can get into connection with the Soviet Union and Outer Mongolia. However, it would be impossible to carry out our mission if we failed to win over the Mohammedans to our sphere and to the anti-Japanese front."^[**]

Communist work among the Mohammedans had begun several years before in the Northwest. Early in 1936, when the Red Army moved across Ninghsia and Kansu toward the Yellow River, vanguards of young Moslems were already propagandizing among the Ninghsia troops, urging the overthrow of the "Kuomintang running-dog"and "traitor to Mohammedanism, "Ma Hung-kuei——and some had lost their heads for it. These were the main promises the Reds made to them：

To abolish all surtaxes.

To help form an autonomous Mohammedan government.

To prohibit conscription.

To cancel old debts and loans.

To protect Mohammedan culture.

To guarantee religious freedom of all sects.

To help create and arm an anti-Japanese Mohammedan army.

To help unite the Mohammedans of China, Outer Mongolia, Sinkiang, and Soviet Russia.

Here, presumably, was something to appeal to nearly every Moslem. Even some of the ahuns reportedly saw in it an opportunity to get rid of Ma Hung-kuei (punishing him for burning the mosques of the Old and New schools), and also a chance to realize an old aspiration——to reestablish direct contact with Turkey through Central Asia. By May, the Communists were claiming that they had achieved what skeptics had said was impossible. They boasted that they had created the nucleus of a Chinese Moslem Red Army.

^[*]It is an interesting character, written , and deriving from an ancient form , in which one clearly sees its evolution from the original ideograph.

^[*]Ma Chung-ying was the fifth Ma, but had now been eliminated from an active role by tribal politics and international intrigue. Sven Hedin gives an interesting account of him in The Flight of "Big Horse" (New York, 1936).

^[**]These are the Han (Chinese), Man (Manchu), Meng (Mongol), Hui (Mohammedan), and Tsang (Tibetan).

^[*]Hsin-hsin chiao, literally, "new-new faith."

^[*]Ninghsia Kung Pao (Ninghsia city, December, 1934).

^[**]Liu Hsiao, "A Survey of Yu Wang Hsien, "Tang-ti Kung-Tso (Pao An), August 3, 1936. This was a Communist and certainly not disinterested source, but the picture in general was supported by studies included in the Stampar report for the League of Nations, to which earlier reference was made.

^[‡]The Japanese were later forced to abandon both their mission and their airfield. In 1937 the Mas pledged their loyalty to the Central Government.

^[**]Company Discussion Materials： "The Mohammedan Problem, "p. 2, First Army Corps, Pol. Dept., June 2, 1936.