Prof. Zheng Hangsheng is one of the important founders of Chinese sociology in the new era and an important figure in the contemporary Chinese sociology community. On November 9, 2014, Zheng Hangsheng, honorary president of the Chinese Sociological Association and Professor of the Highest Rank in Renmin University of China, sadly passed away, being a great loss to the Chinese sociological field. “Theoretical consciousness” is not only an important content of his sociological thought in the later years, but also a core element throughout his entire sociological thought spectrum. His realistic questioning and practice of theoretical consciousness as he preaches awakened the Chinese sociology community to explore and identify with the construction of local sociological theories. Therefore, if we carry out research on Zheng Hangsheng and Chinese sociology theoretical consciousness, systematically analyzing the source and flow of Zheng’s sociological academic thoughts and their internal structure, and comprehensively explaining his theoretical essence, we can get the point of convergence between theoretical innovation and application expansion in order to respond to the academic inheritance and system construction of Chinese sociological independent knowledge from the theoretical and practical aspects, leaving a lot of space for exploration and feasible research paths.