Location and City

The University was first located in the city of Soochow, Jiangsu Province; thus the English name is Soochow University. The Law School was established in Shanghai in 1915. When the Sino-Japanese War began in 1937, the Law School remained in Shanghai while the College of Arts and Sciences moved several times and finally settled in Canton. After the Japanese surrendered in 1945, the University moved back to Soochow.
The University ceased operations in 1949 when the Chinese Communists overran Mainland China.

In 1951, the Soochow Alumni Association in Taiwan started the process of reactivating the University by establishing the Soochow Preparatory School in Downtown Taipei. Three years later, with the approval of the Ministry of Education, it became Soochow College of Law and included five departments: law, economics, accounting, political science, and foreign languages. The Chinese Department was added in 1961, the year the University moved to the Waishuangshi campus in suburban Taipei. New campus buildings and new departments and graduate schools were later added to make the school a full university again. The evening school as well as the Extension School were also established.