Chung Sze-yuen

Sir Sze-yuen Chung, GBM, GBE, FREng, JP (Chinese: 鍾士元; 3 November 1917 – 14 November 2018), often known as Sir S.Y. Chung, was a Hong Kong politician and businessman who served as a Senior Member of the Executive and Legislative Councils during the 1970s and 1980s in the colonial period and the first non-official Convenor of the Executive Council in the SAR period. For his seniority in the Hong Kong political arena, he was nicknamed the "Great Sir" and "Godfather of Hong Kong politics".^[1][2]

An-engineer-turned-politician, Chung was appointed to various public positions by the colonial government including the chairman of the Federation of Hong Kong Industries (FHKI) in the 1960s before he was an Unofficial Member of the Legislative and Executive Councils. As a Senior Member of the Executive Council, Chung was involved heavily in the Sino-British negotiations on the Hong Kong sovereignty in the early 1980s, in which he sought to voice the concerns on the behalf of the Hong Kong people between the Chinese and British governments. After his retirement from the colonial positions in 1988, he began to take Beijing appointments of pre-handover posts. In 1997, he was invited by Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa to become the first Convenor of the Non-official Members of the SAR Executive Council until his second retirement in 1999.^{[citation needed]}