Professor Zheng received his B.A. and M.A. degrees from Beijing University, and his Ph.D. at Princeton University. He was a recipient of Social Science Research Council-MacArthur Foundation Fellowship (1995-1997) and John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Fellowship (2003-2004). He was Professor and founding Research Director of the China Policy Institute, the University of Nottingham, United Kingdom.

He is Editor of Series on Contemporary China (World Scientific Publishing) and Editor of China Policy Series (Routledge). He is also the editor of China: An International Journal and East Asian Policy. 

He has studied both China's domestic transformation and its external relations. His papers have appeared in internationally referred journals such as Comparative Political Studies, Political Science Quarterly, Third World Quarterly and China Quarterly. He is the author of a few dozens of books, including Contemporary China, The Chinese Communist Party as Organizational Emperor, Technological Empowerment, De Facto Federalism in China, Discovering Chinese Nationalism in China and Globalization and State Transformation in China, and editor of many books on China and its foreign relations including the latest volumes China Entering the Xi Era (2014), China and the New International Order (2008), and China and International Relations (2010).   

Besides his research work, Professor Zheng has also been an academic activist.  He served as a consultant to United Nation Development Programme on China's rural development and democracy.  He has also been advising the Chinese government at different levels on various areas of reform and development. In addition, he has been a columnist for Xinbao (Hong Kong) and Zaobao (Singapore) for many years, writing numerous commentaries on China's domestic and international affairs.