This paper aims to preliminarily sort out the research context of Chinese literature on industrial design collected by CNKI in the past 40 years, comment on the hot topics in the key research fields of industrial design theory in China since the release of the 12th Five-Year Plan, and look forward to the possible research directions of industrial design theory in China in the future. The literatures with the title of "Industrial Design" on CNKI.com from 1981 to 2020 are collected, the collected data is analyzed by stages through information visualization software CiteSpace, and the top 10 hot topics in each stage are obtained and the key topics are elaborated. In the past 40 years, the development of industrial design theory has gone through four stages:infrastructure, steady growth, rapid development and high-quality development. The hot topics in the stage of infrastructure construction mainly include industrial designers, industrial design education, modern industrial design, etc. The hot topics in the stage of steady growth mainly include industrial design, industrial designer, industrial design education, etc. The hot topics in the rapid development stage mainly include industrial design, industrial design major, industrial design education, etc. The hot topics in high quality development stage mainly include industrial design, industrial design major, teaching reform and so on. Since the release of the 12th Five-Year Plan, theoretical research on industrial design in China has mainly focused on four fields, namely, industrial design education, industrial design discipline, industrial design industry and industrial design enterprise application.