Chung Sze-yuen

Sir Sze-yuen Chung
鍾士元
Non-Official Convenor of Executive Council
In office
1 July 1997 – 30 June 1999
Appointed byTung Chee-hwa
Succeeded byLeung Chun-ying
Senior Member of the Executive Council
In office
August 1980 – 1 September 1988
Appointed bySir Murray MacLehose
Preceded bySir Yuet-keung Kan
Succeeded byDame Lydia Dunn
Senior Member of the Legislative Council
In office
1974 – August 1978
Appointed bySir Murray MacLehose
Preceded byWoo Pak-chuen
Succeeded bySir Oswald Cheung
Personal details
Born(1917-11-03)3 November 1917
Victoria, Hong Kong
Died14 November 2018(2018-11-14) (aged 101)
Kowloon City, Hong Kong
Spouse
Cheung Yung-hing
(m. 1942; died 1977)
Children3
Alma materSt. Paul's College
University of Hong Kong
University of Sheffield
Chung Sze-yuen
Traditional Chinese鍾士元
Simplified Chinese钟士元
Transcriptions
Standard Mandarin
Hanyu PinyinZhōng Shìyuán
Yue: Cantonese
Yale RomanizationJūng Sih-yùhn
JyutpingZung1 Si6-jyun4

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]

  1. ^ "隔牆有耳:大Sir百歲大壽猛人雲集". 蘋果日報. 4 November 2017.
  2. ^ Growing with Hong Kong: The University and Its Graduates : the First 90 Years. Hong Kong University Press. 2002. p. 273.