In the era of globalization 4.0, international talents are important for enhancing a nation’s competitiveness and global governance capabilities. In the new era of socialism with Chinese characteristics, strategies such as promoting high-quality development, accelerating the formation of new-quality productive forces, jointly advancing the Belt and Road Initiative, promoting exchanges and mutual learning among civilizations, narrating China's stories, and building a high-quality education system etc. all need outstanding international talents with global competence. Global competence refers to an individual's ability to participate in global cooperation and competition, covering three dimensions of knowledge, skills, and values. It requires talents to possess core competencies such as language proficiency, cross-cultural communication skills, international knowledge reserves, global perspective, patriotism and national identity etc. However, the cultivation of outstanding international talents in application-oriented universities in China still faces multiple bottlenecks in terms of internalization-oriented educational philosophy, education and teaching system, international awareness of students, and learning environment etc. Based on the perspective of global competence, application-oriented universities can strengthen the cultivation of outstanding international talents by doing good top-level design, optimizing training programs and curriculum settings, improving teachers' international education and teaching abilities, and creating an international practice environment etc.