 In 1932 he was appointed Governor of Ningxia Province and fought Communist forces in the Shaanxi–Ningxia area for the next several years, up to the all-out Japanese invasion in 1937.During Ma Hongkui's rise to power, he with his cousin Ma Hongbin and warlords Ma Bufang and Ma Buqing were instrumental in helping another warlord, Ma Zhongying, prevail in Gansu because they did not want Ma Zhongying to compete with them in their own turf; they encouraged and supported Ma Zhongying to develop his own power base in other regions such as Gansu and Xinjiang.In 1933, Chiang Kai-shek attempted to strengthen the Nationalist government and to weaken the Ma clique by ordering the unreliable National Revolutionary Army general Sun Dianying to move his private army to Qinghai's Qaidam Basin, ostensibly to colonize it.