He studied history and geography at Zhejiang University and obtained his bachelor's and master's degrees there.
His master thesis discussed the relationship between merchants and scholar-bureaucrats, government in Song Dynasty.
He also obtained a master's degree from the Department of History at Columbia University, with a dissertation on Chinese Labour in the Transvaal, 1904–1907 (1957).
[1] Sung also received an honorary doctor's degree from Korean Konkuk University.
He had a long career in governmental offices including the research institute of national defence.