by Muslim General Ma Bufang in a telegram message that he was prepared to bring the fight to the Japanese. Immediately after the Marco Polo Bridge Incident, Ma Bufang arranged for a cavalry division under Muslim General Ma Lu 馬祿 and another cavalry division under the Muslim General Ma Biao to be sent eastward to fight the Japanese. Ethnic Turkic Salar Muslims made up the majority of the first cavalry division that was sent by Ma Bufang. Ma Biao annihilated the Japanese at the Battle of Huaiyang. When the Japanese asked the Muslim General Ma Hongkui to defect and to become head of a Muslim puppet state under the Japanese, Ma responded through Zhou Baihuang, the Ningxia Secretary of the Kuomintang to remind the Japanese military chief of staff Itagaki Seishiro that many of his relatives fought and died in battle against Eight-Nation Alliance forces during the Battle of Peking during the Boxer Rebellion, including his uncle Ma Fulu, and that since Japanese troops had made up the majority of the Alliance forces, there would be no co-operation with the Japanese. Even before the war had begun, the Chinese Muslim General Ma Zhanshan was fighting and severely mauling the Japanese Army in Manchuria. The Japanese officer Doihara Kenji approached him in an attempt to persuade him to defect. He pretended to defect to the Japanese, used the money that they had given him to rebuild his army, and fought them again by leading a guerrilla campaign in Suiyuan. The Japanese themselves noted that Chiang Kai-shek relied upon Muslim generals like Ma Zhanshan and Bai Chongxi during the war. British telegrams from the British Raj in 1937 said that Tungans (Hui people Chinese-speaking Muslims) like Ma Zhongying and Ma Hushan had reached an agreement with the Soviets, whom they had fought. As the Japanese had begun full-scale warfare with China, the Tungans, led by Ma Zhongying and Ma Hushan, helped the Chinese forces battle Japan. The Soviets released Ma Zhongying, and he and Ma Hushan returned to Gansu. Sven Hedin wrote that Ma Hushan would "certainly obey the summons" to help China against Japan in the war. In 1937, the Chinese government picked up intelligence that the Japanese planned a puppet Hui Muslim country around Suiyuan and Ningxia and that they had sent agents to the region. The Japanese planned to invade Ningxia from Suiyuan in 1939 and to create a