Zhao's early life exemplified the Confucian ideal of upward mobility from destitution through the skillful cultivation and use of intelligence, education, and personal connections.

[4][5] Zhao Yi wrote the Yanpu zaji in "brush-notes" style, where military expenditures of the Qianlong Emperor's reign were recorded.

In one instance, he argued that, while the Confucian Classics constituted the principles of Chinese dynastic government, it was works of history that provide the actual record of the government at work that could act as a guide to what historian Richard J. Smith calls, “proper conduct for the present and future.”[8]: 136 With regard to another historical position, Zhao was at odds with the still popular and (in modern times) patriotic view that the peace policy of the Southern Song dynasty toward the Jin dynasty was traitorous, and Zhao instead adopted the minority position he shared with the earlier Chinese scholar Wang Fuzhi that the peace policy saved the Southern Song from further defeat at the hands of the Jin.

[9]: 49  At least one modern Western scholar has taken a position that aligns with Zhao's, arguing that the peace policy was “validated by the later history of the Southern Sung.”[10]: 49 In another notable instance of an unconventional historical interpretation, Zhao espoused what historian Arthur Waldron terms a “realistic opinion” that the fall of the Ming dynasty was the fault of the Ming dynasty elites, who made empty words and were poorly informed.

In one further notable divergence from many Chinese writers in his era and even more so during the Ming dynasty, Zhao offered praise for the efforts of the founder of the Qin dynasty, Qin Shihuang, to secure the northern borders of China with the early Great Wall rather than the criticisms of certain other Chinese writers (such as Wan Sitong and Li Mengyang).