Zhao worked for YMCA in Beijing starting in 1947 and was one of the 40 initiators of Three-Self Declaration in 1950.

He then became an Anglican priest of Holy Catholic Church of China, the vice president of Beijing Three-Self Patriotic Movement and the deputy secretary-general of the Beijing Municipal Committee of the Political Consultative Conference.

He was elected as a Standing Committee member of the Seventh National People's Congress in 1988.

[1] During the late 1980s, Zhao was a vice-president of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, from which he was removed after his response to the Tiananmen Massacre.

Since leaving China after the Tiananmen Square Massacre of 1989, Zhao resided in Europe and the US and was a visiting scholar at Oklahoma City University (1990–1999).