[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.
He attended the Anglo-Chinese schools including St. Paul's College and was a member of the St. John's Ambulance and lifesaver of the Royal Life Saving Society as a youth.
[4] He was soon hired by the Kowloon Whampoa Shipyard as an assistant engineer working in the machine shops at a monthly salary of 200 Hong Kong dollars.
[6] After the fall of Hong Kong, he left to the neutral Macau and later on to the Jiangxi Province to work with his university lecturer Tsang Wah-shing in the Taihe machine factory in early 1942, where he married his fiancée, Cheung Yung-hing.
[7] In 1944, when Jiangxi fell under the Japanese hand, he joined the exodus to a small town near Xingquo and worked in a machine factory for making textile equipment.
He worked as a chief engineer for his friend's family business of World Light Manufactory before he further his study in the United Kingdom in the late summer of 1948.
[12] In order to explore the Hong Kong's prospects after the expiry of the New Territories Land Lease in 1997, an Advisory Committee headed by Financial Secretary Sir Philip Haddon-Cave was set up in 1977 in which Chung was also a member.
Before the beginning of the negotiations, he was invited to sit in the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) in which he declined the offer as he saw it would be a betrayal to the British government.
In September 1982, the Unofficial Members of the Executive and Legislative Councils (UMELCO) headed by Chung sent a five-member delegation to London with Roger Lobo, Li Fook-wo, Lydia Dunn and Chan Kam-chuen to meet with Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher over the 1997 issue to suggest the status quo of British administration in Hong Kong.
However, the "three-legged stool" proposal of the Hong Kong representatives besides the British and Chinese sides on the negotiation table was not realised as the UMELCO were excluded from Sino-British talks in 1983.
[16] In December, Governor Edward Youde told the UMELCO that Britain had decided to return the sovereignty and administration of Hong Kong to China on 1 July 1997 but was not known to the public until 20 April 1984.
"[19] Stung by this humiliation, Chun urged the Hong Kong people to submit their opinions on the agreement as the delegation exited the parliament surrounded by reporters.
[20] In June 1984, Chung headed a three-member delegation, including Lydia Dunn and Lee Quo-wei, to meet with Deng Xiaoping in Beijing.
The remarks attracted scorn from the Director of the New China News Agency (NCNA) Xu Jiatun, who described them as "ministers falling from grace" of the British.
However, Chung maintained close ties with Xu Jiatun in the ensuing years on the issues of the implementation of the Sino-British Joint Declaration and democratic development in Hong Kong.
During the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, Chung urged Governor Sir David Wilson not to abandon the government's long-held policy of neutrality towards China.
Chung also advised his protege, Senior Member of the Legislative Council Allen Lee, and Steven Poon, to abandon any pretense of being above politics and form a proper political party with its belief, vision, discipline and platform to counter the emergence of the populist United Democrats of Hong Kong (UDHK) following the first Legislative Council election in 1991.
Lee later transformed the think tank Co-operative Resources Centre (CRC), consisting of appointed Legislative Council members, into the Liberal Party in 1993.