[1] ITU is the specialized United Nations Agency for Information and Communication Technology (ICT), working on promotion, collaboration, and standardization.

[2] From 1986 to 1992, Zhao was a senior staff member in what was then the International Telegraph and Telephone Consultative Committee (known under its French acronym CCITT), and from 1993 to 1998 in ITU's Telecommunication Standardization Bureau, TSB.

He contributed seminal articles to a number of prestigious Chinese technical publications, and in 1985 was awarded a prize for his achievements in science and technology with the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications.

[2] Zhao was elected Director of ITU Telecommunication Standardization Bureau in Minneapolis, USA in 1998 and re-elected for a second term in Marrakech, Morocco in 2002.

[3] He oversaw the intersectoral coordination of projects and programmes on areas such as the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) process, climate change and emergency telecommunications, and accessibility for persons with disabilities (PwD).