The survival of humanity in this increasingly globalizing world depends very much upon intercultural understanding achieved through communication between people of different cultures. And it is generally considered that people have to acquire intercultural competence so as to function adequately well with cultural others. Therefore, the research on the theoretical construction of intercultural competence and related issues has become one of the key areas of intercultural communication studies. However, because of the Western traditions that have dominated communication studies for so long, some prevailing tendencies so far in the research, such as reductionism and fragmentationism, the preoccupation with effectiveness, and the non-crosscultural orientations, have to be problematized. It seems extremely necessary for us to revisit the construction of intercultural competence and its significance in new and wider perspectives and try to develop the truly crosscultural paradigms if the research on intercultural competence is hoped to contribute substantially to the improvement of intercultural co-existence throughout the world. 