CHINA: Ma's Roadwork

It was only 15 years ago that one of the many Ma family warlords sent word through the hills and in three weeks raised a fanatical army of 60,000 Chinese Moslems. Looting and terrorizing, the rebels nearly conquered a northwest China empire half as big as Europe before being defeated by the "Christian General," Feng Yu-hsiang. Last week another of the Ma clan, once-rambunctious General Ma Puching, peacefully accepted appointment as Commissioner of Reclamation in the dreary swamplands of Chinghai Province near Tibet.

First reports indicated that General Ma, whose clan holds...