Following the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931, Ma was sent by the Chinese government to Al-Azhar University in Cairo, Egypt, to cultivate relations with Arab nations. He was a member of the first group of government-sponsored Chinese students to study there - which included men who would later become leading Chinese scholars of Arabic and Islam, such as Na Zhong. While in Cairo, he contacted the Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated Salafi Publishing House, which agreed in 1934 to publish one of his works - the first full-length book in Arabic on the history of Islam in China. A year later, Ma translated the "Analects" into Arabic. Whilst in Cairo, he would also subsequently translate several of Muhammad Abduh's works into Chinese, with the assistance of Rashid Rida, as well as 's "The Truth of Islam". To promote Chinese interests in the context of the Second Sino-Japanese War, Ma was sent to Mecca in early 1939 as part of a hajj delegation alongside 27 other students - a journey on which they spoke to Ibn Saud about the determination of 'all the Chinese people' to resist the Japanese.