Ma Bufang with his son Ma Jiyuan fled by an airplane from Qinghai to Chongqing, then Hong Kong. In October 1949, Chiang Kai-shek urged him to return to the Northwest to resist the PLA, but he chose to migrate to Saudi Arabia with more than 200 relatives and subordinates, in the name of hajj. He later worked as the first ambassador to Saudi Arabia for the Republic of China.