In order to develop the conversion of heavy oil with a high yield of propylene in the catalytic cracking process, ZSM-5 zeolite was modified by tungsten and phosphorus, which was proved to be an effective method. Characterization results show that the improvement of catalytic performance could be correlated to the interaction of phosphorus and tungsten species on ZSM-5. P inhibited the aggregation of tungsten species on ZSM-5 and was conductive to convert the tungsten species with octahedral coordination into tetrahedral coordination. And this ultimately led to that more acid sites were reserved after hydrothermal treatment in the tungsten and phosphorus co-modified ZSM-5 catalyst. Phosphorus species played an important role to restrain the dehydrogenation activity of tungsten. In addition, a model reflecting the interaction between tungsten species and ZSM-5 framework was proposed.