A Study On Cross-Cultural Adaptation Of Indonesian Overseas Students In China

In recent years, as the number of foreign students in China continues to increase, China has become the favorite option of students around the world for studying abroad. Based on a statistical report from2012, the number of foreign students studying in China has already surpassed320,000. Because of this, the Chinese government has joined hands with all its related departments and schools concerned to improve the facilities used by the foreign students, in order to provide better learning and a more comfortable living environment. However, as China’s understanding of each country’s circumstances is still limited, even though much has already been done, the problems have only been solved on the surface.By the means of using qualitative and quantitative research, this thesis intends to probe into the problems experienced by the overseas Indonesian students due to cross-cultural adaptation. Basing on the studies’ findings, it then attempts to bring forth relevant and useful countermeasures and suggestions. As the Indonesian students in China are widely dispersed, only students in Xiamen and Beijing have been chosen to be its object of study. Furthermore, in order to further the research of the existing differences between the students from these two areas, they have been categorized into two groups-overseas Chinese Indonesian students and overseas non-Chinese Indonesian students. Concerning the problems experienced by the foreign students due to the cross-cultural adaptation, this thesis mainly investigates four dimensions of adaptability:life adaptability, language adaptability, cultural adaptability, and psychological adaptability.Research results and findings are mainly embodied in these four aspects:1. The overall cross-cultural adaptation of the overseas Indonesian students is on a good level. However, among the four dimensions of adaptability, the cultural adaptability is on the lowest level. Through the data analysis and the interview, it has been found that the reason for that lays in the lack of interest of the students in Chinese culture, as well as in the over simplicity of their learning method.2. Factors that influence the cross-cultural adaptation of the overseas Indonesian students include population statistics (source of tuition fees, duration of stay in China, time spent studying Chinese, level of Chinese), purpose of learning Chinese, identification, support of the community, stereotypes, knowledge and skills, cultural distance, etc.3. Generally speaking, there is no significant difference found in the overall cross-cultural adaption between the overseas Indonesian students in Beijing and in Xiamen. However, further analysis reveals that there is an evident difference in the life adaptability, especially on how the students adapt to the distinct climate of each area.4. There is a significant difference in the cultural adaptability between the overseas Chinese Indonesian students and the overseas non-Chinese Indonesian students. It is found that the cultural adaptability of the overseas non-Chinese Indonesian students is better compared to that of the overseas Chinese Indonesian students.