Founded in 1994, the department was originally named “Department of Chinese Literature”. Later, President Dr. Chuan Lee and the Dean of School of Applied Languages Dr. Chen, Te-Chao applied to the Ministry of Education to change the name of the department to “Applied Chinese”. Finally, the Department of Applied Chinese was officially established in 1995. MCU’s Chinese Department was, in fact, the first in the country to adopt the word “applied” in its name to show our emphasis on practical application.

The Department of Applied Chinese began to recruit students in 1994. The Department of Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language was established in 2006. In 2025, the Department of Applied Chinese Literature and the Department of Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language were merged to form the Department of Applied Chinese and Teaching Chinese as a Second Language. Currently, there are eight undergraduate and six graduate classe cohorts. The total number of students is around five hundred. The first chair of the department was Dr. Chen, Te-Chao and the current chair is Yu, Shiu-Yun.