Career
Born in Shanghai in 1926, he received his Bachelor from Saint John's University in 1946. Zhao worked for Young Men"s Christian Association in Beijing starting in 1947 and was one of the 40 initiators of Three-Self Declaration in 1950. He worked at Institute of World Religions, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and eventually became vice president of the Academy and TSPM in 1980.
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 has resided in Europe and the United States. He was a visiting scholar at Oklahoma City University from approximately 1990-1999.