In January 2007, Zhao won the Australian Open with 9.5/11 points with a 2673 performance rating. In May 2007, he was first at the 2007 Oceania Zonal in Fiji with 7/9 points, ahead of New Zealander Puchen Wang. This enabled him to qualify for the 2007 FIDE World Cup in Khanty Mansiysk, Russia, where he was knocked out in the first round by Magnus Carlsen (0-2). In July 2007, he won the Australian National University Open with a score of 6/7. He won the Oceania Chess Championship again in 2011 with a score of 8.5/9 and represented the Oceania Zone at the Chess World Cup 2011 where he was eliminated by Evgeny Tomashevsky.
Zhao achieved all three of the required grandmaster (GM) norms over two months in December 2007 and January 2008. Zhao scored 7/9 earning his first GM norm in the First Saturday chess tournament (1–10 December 2007) in Budapest, Hungary. Zhao earned his second GM norm by convincingly winning with 6.5 points the VII Festival Internacional de Ajedrez GEMA tournament (10th category round-robin) which was held from 26 December 2007 until 5 January 2008 in Mondariz Balneario (Pontevedra), Spain. In his third attempt, which was unsuccessful, Zhao played in the 33rd Seville Open/XXXIII Abierto Internacional "Ciudad de Sevilla" (5–12 January 2008) Sevilla, Spain finishing with 6.5/9 points (=10th place). In 22–31 January 2008 he managed to achieve his final GM norm at the 2008 Gibtelecom Chess Festival in Gibraltar. By also achieving a rating over 2500 he thus qualified for the title of Grandmaster. Zhao is Australia's third grandmaster, after Ian Rogers and Darryl Johansen.
