He is also known as the father of Elaine Chao and father-in-law of United States Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.

Chao was born on December 29, 1927,[2] in Malu, a small, rural farming village in Jiading County outside Shanghai, Republic of China.

[4] In 1964, after earning his MBA, Chao founded Foremost Group, a shipping, trading and finance conglomerate based in New York.

[9] Chao has led the global shipping industry in incorporating "greener", more environmentally friendly designs and technology into his company's fleet of new vessels, some of the world's largest bulk carriers.

[5] Chao and his wife established the Mulan Chu Foundation (later renamed the Shanghai Mulan Education Foundation) in 1984 to provide scholarships to help students in the U.S. and China access higher education and to promote U.S.-China cultural exchanges.

During that time, she was accused of using her office to promote her family's shipping business by appearing in interviews with Chao, and she asked Department of Transportation staff to promote her father's biography or to edit her father's Wikipedia article.

[24] Chao is the first winner of the Chinese American Academic and Professional Society Distinguished Lifetime Achievement Award (2004).

[28] The U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Citizen and Immigration Service recognized him in February 2008 as an Outstanding American by Choice.