He was the "Tu Emperor" of Ningxia and one of the "Four Horses" of the Northwest Warlords. At a time of national crisis, many people ran to save the country and save the people, but he took the opportunity to accumulate money, and when he fled to the United States, he took 7.5 tons of gold. This person is Ma Hongkui.
In 1892, Ma Hongkui was born in Hezhou, Gansu Province, to a family of military generals. His uncle Ma Fulu was a martial artist and martial artist during the Guangxu dynasty, who died in the course of fighting the Eight-Nation Alliance, and his father Ma Fuxiang inherited his brother's position and troops. Since childhood, Ma Hongkui has been influenced by his family's heavy teaching of martial arts, and he has learned martial arts while studying. At the age of eighteen, he entered the Gansu Army Academy to study. During this time, he participated in anti-Qing activities and secretly became a member of the League. When the Qing army found out, they arrested him and imprisoned him. Ma Fuxiang ran around before bailing him out on bail and letting him join the army as an instructor and lead his troops to snipe Bai Lang.
Yuan Shikai awarded Him the rank of Major General in the Army for his meritorious efforts in encircling and suppressing Bai Lang. Yuan Shikai, in order to contain the various warlords, ordered them to send a son to Beijing, which is equivalent to the ancient kings of various domains sending their sons to Beijing as protons, and Ma Hongkui was sent to the capital by his father and served as a bodyguard. Soon, Yuan Shikai ordered the zhaowu army to be reorganized into the new army in Ningxia, and ordered Ma Hongkui to serve as the sub-commander of the new army. After Yuan Shikai's death, he succeeded li yuanhong as a squire.
After Duan Qirui came to power, Ma Hongkui was promoted to brigade commander of the Fifth Mixed Brigade, and later attached himself to Feng Yuxiang. In September 1926, Feng Yuxiang took the oath of wuyuan and responded to the Northern Expedition of the South. Ma Hongkui's forces were expanded into the 4th Route Army of the Nationalist Coalition Army, and he served as commander-in-chief. At the beginning of the following year, his unit was reorganized into the 4th Army of the 1st Front of the 2nd Army of the National Revolutionary Army, and the commander was still him. In 1929, he defected to Chiang Kai-shek.
In November of the same year, Ma Hongkui was sent to Ningxia to take up a post. After coming to power in Ningxia, he announced at the first provincial congress four major policies for governing Ningxia: clearing the land and acres, sorting out finances, establishing armor protection, and "encircling and suppressing" the Red Army. In order to implement these policies, he promulgated the "Regulations on Qingzhang Land and Mu" and began to check and verify the land and acres of the whole province; promulgated the "Regulations on the Service of Armor Protection Personnel in All Counties of Ningxia Province", and implemented a chain of armor protection systems in the province to prevent the Red Army; he privately let the Ningxia Bank print 3.45 million banknotes and forcibly let the old coins in the hands of the people be converted into new coins in half. This extra money naturally fell into his pocket.
At the beginning of 1933, Ma Hongkui officially became the chairman of Ningxia and ruled Ningxia for more than a decade. At the beginning, he put on a posture of exerting himself to govern the country, proposing to implement the Three People's Principles and eliminate the tobacco and poison bandits. However, his real credo was: "Where there is a soldier, there is power, and when there is power, there is money." All his activities revolved around the purpose of soldiers, power, and money, and he installed cronies everywhere. Old Jiang believed that Ningxia's transportation and production were backward, remote location, and there was no need to control too strictly, so he decided to leave the education department, and the rest of the positions were nominated and sponsored by Ma Hongkui himself. During the more than ten years that Ma Hongkui ruled Ningxia, he looted a lot of money and became the richest person in the local area.
Shortly after the founding of New China, Ma Hongkui fled to Taiwan Province with his wives and concubines and children, and some people wanted him to take responsibility for the defeat in the northwest, so he was dismissed from his post and investigated. All this made him disheartened, and then found an excuse to leave Taiwan. He fled to the United States with 7.5 tons of gold and three beautiful wives that he had saved over the years.
But his life in the United States is not good, on the one hand, the three wives are incompatible and often contradictory, on the other hand, he is older and his health is not as good as before. Life in the United States is not satisfactory, coupled with the fact that people are old, they always think of "falling leaves and returning to their roots", which makes Ma Hongkui recall his life in China and miss his hometown more and more. But the people will not let him go of the mistakes he has made, so he can only live in the United States with the longing for his hometown
On January 14, 1970, Ma Hongkui died of illness in Los Angeles at the age of 78.