Intercultural communication competence (ICC) is considered not only a capability that enhances professional competitiveness in the international labour market but also a key factor in building harmonious multicultural communities (Griffith, Wolfeld, Armon, Rios & Liu, 2016; Luo & Chan, 2022). Over the past decade, the wave of international student mobility (Choudaha, 2017) has led to a growing interest in researching intercultural communication in higher education (Deardorff, 2006; Deardorff & Arasaratnam-Smith, 2017; Fantini, 2020). As the largest group of international students worldwide (God & Zhang, 2018), Chinese students have thus become a focal point in intercultural research (Héliot, Mittelmeier & Rienties, 2020; Lee, Knutson, Koch, Brown & Keyes, 2022; Sadykova, 2014; Spencer-Oatey, 2018). To understand this group, scholars have investigated their intercultural experiences and found that Chinese students encounter numerous challenges in intercultural communication. These challenges are considered to have a negative impact on their engagement in intercultural communication, thereby hindering their adaptation to new learning and living environments. Previous research has indicated that individuals with higher ICC are more likely to overcome adverse factors and thus better adapt to new cultural environments (Kim, 2001; Ward & Kennedy, 1999). Consequently, the question of how to better engage in intercultural communication becomes a matter of how to develop one's ICC.

Understanding successful experiences in overcoming adverse factors in intercultural communication is crucial for the development of individuals' ICC (Gudykunst & Kim, 1992). However, no studies have yet systematically reviewed successful experiences in intercultural communication. It remains challenging to comprehensively understand the difficulties Chinese students face in intercultural communication, as well as how these challenges have been approached and overcome.

Current intercultural communication-related reviews mainly focus on ICC conceptualisation (Arasaratnam, 2015; Spitzberg & Changnon, 2009), assessment methods (Griffith et al., 2016; Müller et al., 2020; Luo & Chan, 2022), and effectiveness evaluation (Zhang & Zhou, 2023). However, no study has reviewed students' intercultural experiences, particularly those of Chinese students in intercultural communication encounters. A comprehensive understanding of Chinese students' experiences in approaching challenges during intercultural communication can clarify which challenges have been well managed on the one hand, while also identifying those that remain unresolved on the other. The findings of this review contribute to a systematic presentation of challenges in intercultural communication and the regulatory responses used to address them. This provides valuable insights for selecting or designing solutions to overcome barriers in intercultural communication.

The purpose of this review is to examine the challenges encountered by Chinese students in their intercultural communication experiences, the regulatory responses to these challenges, and the effectiveness of such responses. Therefore, our research questions are as follows: What are the main challenges Chinese students face in intercultural communication encounters? What are the regulatory responses to the challenges Chinese students encounter in intercultural communication? The regulatory response includes two categories: one is self-initiated (i.e., coping strategies), and the other is initiated by an external source (i.e., intervention) such as a human instructor, peer, technology, etc. Two sub-research questions are therefore: What coping strategies do Chinese students use to deal with intercultural communication challenges? What interventions have been applied to Chinese students to address challenges in intercultural communication? Lastly, how effective are these regulatory responses?

We begin with a definition of intercultural communication, followed by an explanation of the challenges, and subsequently delineate coping strategies and interventions.

Definition Of Intercultural Communication

There are many definitions of the concept of intercultural communication, one of which emphasizes the exchange process and different cultures (e.g., Gudykunst & Kim, 1984; Rogers & Steinfatt, 1999). For example, it has been defined as “the symbolic exchange process whereby individuals from two (or more) different cultural communities attempt to negotiate shared meanings in an interactive situation within an embedded societal system” (Ting-Toomey & Chung, 2012, p. 24). However, there are different schools of thought regarding how culture and intercultural communication should be defined, particularly in relation to cultures interacting with each other.

There are three main schools of thought that define culture in different ways (Gabelica & Popov, 2020). The first is the value-based approach, represented by Hofstede (1980), which regards countries as meaningful cultural units. From a psychological perspective (Bond et al., 2004), the second school of thought conceptualizes culture as a set of psychological constructs (e.g., beliefs, values, expectations, cognitive styles, and behavioral meanings) shared among individuals, meaning that culture resides in people’s minds and behaviors. In contrast to this psychological perspective, the third school of thought—the contextual view—argues that culture exists outside individuals’ minds and behaviours and that individuals simply react to it (Schwartz, 2014).

This review synthesizes these schools of thought and thus considers culture as a product of personal experiences. We do not equate country with culture; however, we still use the label Chinese to highlight a commonality among the subjects of this review—namely, that their primary personal experiences were shaped in China. Therefore, in this review, intercultural communication refers to communication between individuals whose main personal experiences have been shaped in different contexts.

Challenge

In this article, challenge is used as an umbrella term encompassing various factors that negatively affect intercultural communication, such as weaknesses in ability and feelings of discomfort. Additionally, challenge is used interchangeably with synonyms such as problem (Fox, 2020), barrier (Cao, Zhu & Meng, 2021), and difficulty (Bilotserkovets et al., 2020), all of which indicate impediments to effective intercultural communication.

Regulatory Responses

Regulatory responses are defined as “strategic practices enacted dynamically by individuals or the collective” (Järvelä & Hadwin, 2024). These practices refer to responses to challenges in intercultural communication and can be initiated either by Chinese students themselves or by external sources (e.g., human instructors, peers, technology, etc.).

Self-initiated responses are referred to as coping strategies, which we define as cognitive, motivational, behavioural, and metacognitive actions that students engage in to manage challenges in intercultural communication. In contrast, responses initiated by external sources are referred to as interventions, which involve the influence of external factors on students’ behaviour, cognition, motivation, and emotions, guiding and shaping their interaction processes.

The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) statement (Page et al., 2021) was adapted for this systematic review, and the PRISMA 2020 flow diagram was used to guide the process of identifying relevant publications and assessing their quality.

Search Strategy

Five online databases were searched: Scopus, ERIC, Web of Science (core collection only), PsycINFO (via ProQuest), and China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI). Four sets of search terms were used, corresponding to (1) culturally diverse contexts, (2) communicative challenges and corresponding coping strategies, (3) Chinese students, and (4) higher education, as shown in Table 1. The search terms were selected based on previous reviews and the most frequently cited studies (e.g., Byram, 1997; Deardorff, 2006; Spitzberg & Changnon, 2009) that focus on intercultural communication.

Challenges Encountered By Chinese Students In Intercultural Communication (RQ 1)

We identified two main challenges (as defined in Section 1.2) encountered by Chinese students in intercultural communication and recorded 105 occurrences of these challenges and their sub-challenges (i.e., some studies reported more than one occurrence) in Table 3.

We fully agree that no group should be isolated in intercultural relationships, and even the division of cultural groups should be approached with caution. To align this review with the larger project framework and to keep the review within a manageable scope, we chose to investigate the Chinese student population. This does not mean that we have ignored other groups; we are aware that the ideal scenario would be to observe all parties within intercultural relationships. The results observed from Chinese students alone may lack generalizability, but our aim is not to identify common challenges for everyone or specific methods for addressing certain issues. Instead, our goal is to understand the feelings and reactions of a subset of individuals in intercultural communication to explore the factors that influence behaviour. Based on the findings of this review and subsequent discussions, we believe that communication needs are a potential influencing factor.

Challenges Arise From Communicative Needs

The importance of context in understanding and analyzing intercultural communication has been emphasized and confirmed (Kimmel & Volet, 2010; Spitzberg & Changnon, 2009), and it is considered fundamental to effective communication (Gudykunst, 2005). However, we find that the success of intercultural communication may not have a direct causal relationship with context. For instance, both successful and unsuccessful cases of intercultural communication can be found in various contexts, such as the host country (e.g., Hu et al., 2016; Zhu, 2017), local settings (e.g., Han et al., 2020; Tang et al., 2018), international colleges in China (e.g., Ou & Gu, 2018, 2020), and online environments (e.g., Popov et al., 2019; Sadykova, 2014). This pattern also holds within the same context, such as intercultural group work (e.g., Einfalt, 2020; Hou & McDowell, 2014). In all contexts where challenges in intercultural communication arise, at least one party is unable to meet the communicative needs of the situation.

For example, a Chinese student was excluded by other European group members for not meeting the communicative needs of a group discussion (Joyce & Hopkins, 2014). The student struggled to keep up with the interaction pace due to unfamiliarity with the accents and speaking speed of other group members. At the same time, the European group members neglected the Chinese student's communicative needs by failing to adjust their speaking pace or assist in adaptation. Another study found that Chinese students were able to fully participate in interactions and express their opinions in intercultural group work (Zou & Yu, 2019). Additionally, an example from an international college in China showed that Chinese students were reluctant to use English in daily social interactions, which affected their ability to express themselves freely and fully understand others. However, they were highly willing to use English to explain Chinese culture to international peers during specific activities (Ou & Gu, 2018). Ou & Gu (2018) interpreted this shift in attitude as a reflection of language power dynamics and identity. We, however, interpret it as a difference in communicative needs. Therefore, the severity of challenges perceived by students may depend on the extent to which they can meet communicative needs.

Communication Needs Affect Communication Evaluation

There seems to be no direct one-to-one correspondence between coping strategies or interventions and specific challenges (see Table 5). In other words, there is no “silver bullet” to address a particular challenge. Moreover, sometimes coping strategies and interventions have very limited effects. For example, Chinese students found it difficult to cope with the challenges of language usage in the host country through self-learning (e.g., Zhai & Razali, 2022). However, there are also cases where self-learning proved to be an effective way to improve language proficiency in the host country (e.g., K. M. Kim, 2022). In both cases, the students’ self-learning strategies were very similar, involving the use of textbooks, audio materials, and videos, yet the outcomes were vastly different.

Beyond individual differences, we speculate that the primary reason for this divergence in evaluation is their respective communicative needs. In the former case, the student's communicative need was to successfully socialize with local teachers and students, while in the latter case, the goal was to achieve academic success. Hennebry & Fordyce (2017) clearly reflected this in unstructured intercultural collaborative learning, where students with different communicative needs showed significant differences in their evaluation of learning outcomes. For example, some students believed that this method of learning clarified lecture content, while others expressed doubt because they did not obtain clear answers or results from the exchange. Conversely, in structured intercultural collaborative learning, students’ evaluations of learning outcomes showed greater consistency, including improved understanding and respect for collaboration methods from different cultural backgrounds (Popov et al., 2019).

Therefore, when participating in or organizing intercultural communication, it is necessary to first consider clarifying and unifying communication needs.

Based on the findings and discussions of this review, we propose an intercultural communication diagnostic diagram (Figure 2).

This review has examined the challenges encountered by Chinese students in intercultural communication, mapped the relationships between these challenges and the coping strategies and interventions employed to address them, and further elucidated the effects and outcomes of implementing these coping strategies and interventions. We found that there is no one-to-one correspondence between challenges and coping strategies or interventions, and sometimes the implementation of coping strategies or interventions has little effect. From this, we discussed the relationship between challenges and context in intercultural communication and speculated that the emergence of challenges is related to communication needs. We then continued to discuss the impact of communication needs on individuals’ evaluations of their intercultural communication experiences, affirming the importance of communication needs in intercultural communication. Based on the above findings and discussions, we propose a diagnostic diagram for intercultural communication, which serves as a framework for reflecting on intercultural experiences. This framework is primarily used for reflecting on the communication process rather than assessing outcomes.

We state the limitations of this review here to avoid potential bias. The first limitation is that keyword searches may not capture all relevant studies, as some pertinent information is hidden within the text rather than in the abstract, title, or keywords. Additionally, subjective selection methods, such as reading titles, abstracts, and full texts, may also lead to misjudgments and omissions. The second limitation is the potential bias introduced by the authors’ own context, such as a focus on the educational development of Chinese students.

This review study points to numerous worthwhile areas for future research. Firstly, we continue to advocate for the use of diverse data sources (e.g., peer evaluation and observation) to avoid biases that arise from an overreliance on self-reported data. Secondly, we believe that groups beyond sojourners should be given more attention. Furthermore, communication needs may serve as a significant indicator in evaluating intercultural communication experiences, and the correlation between communication needs and individuals’ behaviours and perceptions within intercultural communication warrants further validation.

Acknowledgement Statement: Thank you to Dr Jianzhai Wu, Dr Jing Zhang, and Dr Xiaomin Ma from the Agricultural Information Institute of CAAS for their dedication and support towards this article. Your insightful suggestions and enthusiastic assistance have greatly improved this manuscript.

Conflicts of Interest: The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have influenced this work.

Authors’ Contribution Statements: C.J. Yang: Conceptualization, Methodology, Validation, Formal analysis and investigation, Data curation, Writing - original draft, Writing - review and editing, Visualization, Project administration. V. Popov: Conceptualization, Methodology, Validation, Investigation, Data curation, Writing - review and editing, Visualization, Resources, Supervision. H.J.A. Biemans: Conceptualization, Methodology, Validation, Investigation, Data curation, Writing - review and editing, Visualization, Resources, Supervision. J.F. Liu: Resources, Data curation, Supervision.

FundingStatement: This study was conducted without financial support from any funding agency or organisation.

Data Availability Statement: Data is available upon request. Please contact the corresponding author for any additional information on data access or usage.

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