Abstract: The Western world has gone through three phases in its understanding of Chinese gardens: 1) fondness and aspiration before the 19th century, 2) depreciation and rejection around the turn of the 20th century, and 3) return to reason since the 1930s. This research analyzes the process of this development and the reasons behind the changes. The result shows the intricate interrelationship between cultural dissemination and national image building. The changes in the first two phases were related to the confrontation of Chinese and Western ideologies and the competition in the cross-culture communication between China-West and Japan-West. In this historical context, Chinese scholars published an English journal, T’ien Hsia Monthly. The architect Tung Chuin published his English article Chinese Gardens in 1936, and art historian Osvald Sirén published his book Trädgårdar i Kina in 1948. Both the article and the book were written in the context of the competition of cultural exports between China and Japan, leaving important influences on the Chinese garden study and its overseas communication.