94% of researchers rate our articles as excellent or good
Learn more about the work of our research integrity team to safeguard the quality of each article we publish.
Find out more
ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Cultural Psychology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1560298
This article is part of the Research TopicIntercultural Communication and International StudentsView all 7 articles
Exploring the Cross-Cultural Communication Challenges of Foreign Students in China: The Mediating Effects of Social Media Interaction and Psychological
Provisionally accepted
Min Xu1,2*
Aspalila bt. Shapii1- 1School of Education, Universiti Utara Malaysia, Sintok 06010, Malaysia, Kedah, Malaysia
- 2College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Xianyang Normal University, xianyang, China
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
With the development of international education, an increasing number of foreign students are choosing to study Chinese in China.However, due to cultural differences and adaptation challenges, enhancing these students' intercultural communicative competence (ICC) has become a pressing issue. Based on Self-Determination Theory (SDT), this study aims to explore how autonomy, competence, and relatedness influence the ICC of foreign students studying Chinese in China through the mediating effects of social media interaction and psychological resilience. A survey was conducted, collecting data from 500 valid samples of foreign students from various universities in China, encompassing diverse nationalities and cultural backgrounds. Structural equation modeling was employed to analyze the data.The findings reveal that autonomy, competence, and relatedness significantly and positively influence social media interaction and psychological resilience, which in turn enhance ICC. Competence emerged as the most influential factor, while psychological resilience played a critical role in cross-cultural adaptation. The results suggest that fostering autonomy, competence, and relatedness effectively enhances students' ICC. This study provides theoretical support for the field of intercultural education and recommends that educational institutions leverage social media platforms and strategies to cultivate psychological resilience, helping students better adapt to multicultural environments.
Keywords: Foreign students in China, Intercultural communicative competence (ICC), Self-determination theory (SDT), Social media interaction, psychological resilience, autonomy, competence, Relatedness
Received: 14 Jan 2025; Accepted: 14 Apr 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Xu and Shapii. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Min Xu, School of Education, Universiti Utara Malaysia, Sintok 06010, Malaysia, Kedah, Malaysia
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.