Zhao spoke approvingly of French culture and quoted the writer Victor Hugo, who wrote a frequently quoted letter about the looting of the Old Summer Palace.
China has repeatedly demanded the return of the sculptures looted when the Old Summer Palace (Yuanmingyuan) was burned down by Anglo-French forces during the Second Opium War in 1860.
In the gardens northwest of the Forbidden City that are known to Westerners as the Old Summer Palace, he ordered the construction of a number of European-style stone buildings with Baroque touches.