Tao Zhu
Zhao rose to prominence in Guangdong from 1951, initially following a ruthless ultra-leftist, Tao Zhu, who was notable for his heavy-handed efforts to force local peasants into living and working in "People's Communes". When Mao Zedong's Great Leap Forward (1958–1961) created an artificial famine, Mao publicly blamed the nation's food shortages on the greed of rich peasants, who were supposedly hiding China's huge surplus production from the government. Zhao subsequently led a local campaign aimed at torturing peasants into revealing their food supplies, which did not exist. On the other hand, Zhao worked with regional party officials to put in place arrangements that allowed peasents to profit from the sale of their crops. These projects were masked by ambiguous names such as "a control system for field management" to hide them from Mao, who would have forbidden the projects. According to Zhao, areas where these plans were implemented had a much lower death toll from famine. Jasper Becker, however, wrote that Zhao's torture campaign during the Great Leap meant he was partially responsible for the millions of people who died from starvation and malnutrition in Guangdong between 1958 and 1961.