Zhang is insightful academically, and his thoughts and achievements are more noticeable. He loved reading and was diligent in writing, and his works and poems were valued by people at that time. After his death, Wen Chao in Yueshuizhai and Shi Chao in Yueshuizhai edited by others preserved most of his poems. Some of his thoughts can be seen from it. First of all, he clearly put forward the economic thought of treating both the symptoms and the root causes and attaching importance to business. He believes that a country's economy should have a long-term vision, not just focusing on the immediate future, opposing indiscriminate mining of mountain resources and making the country underutilized, and should develop production. At that time, when people's livelihood was depressed and contradictions were superimposed, it was necessary to stop the current situation of a large number of cultivated land being barren. At the same time, we should relax the restrictions on businessmen, give them a certain space for activities, and let them be willing to engage in business activities. His thought of "attaching importance to business" was valuable in the ruling class at that time, which was based on agriculture and attached importance to agriculture and suppressed business. In the Ming Dynasty, Neo-Confucianism was the dominant official orthodoxy. Although Zhang was educated by Taoism and loved the Five Classics since childhood, he insisted on the anti-Taoism democratic thought.
In the debate between justice and human desire, Zhang took a clear-cut stand against Taoism's consistent advocacy of "preserving justice and eliminating human desire". He thinks what people want is natural. Using feudal ethics to regulate people's behavior is to stifle people's desires and feelings, and it is a bold criticism of traditional morality. This is similar to Li Zhi's thought of his basic contemporaries. At that time, Li Zhi was persecuted by the rulers and attacked by Taoism, and Zhang worshipped Li Zhi very much. In this era when Taoist thought dominated the ideological circle for a long time, he challenged the feudal traditional Taoist thought with the wisdom and courage of a thinker, which was of great progressive significance. As a poet, many of his poems and calligraphy also shine with his true feelings. Zhang is busy with politics, but he does not neglect poetry. At that time, most students served stereotyped writing, and few people wasted their time on poetry. However, Zhang disagreed and was famous for his poems. He opposes plagiarism and imitation and advocates nature and truth. This is of great significance to the serious tendency of retro in the literary world at that time, blindly imitating plagiarism and only emphasizing formal skills. What he did to correct the malpractices was the same as that advocated by Yuan Hongdao, a police officer in Hubei.