Abstract: To overcome the deficiencies of traditional thin plate steel shear walls and steel-plate shear walls with slits, the present study proposed a steel-tube shear wall with slits (SSWS), a novel wall that is composed of a row of rectangular steel tubes with slits in between. The study first introduced the mechanisms of a SSWS in lateral load resistant behavior, based on which typical SSWS specimens for numerical analysis were designed. Subsequently, finite element analyses were performed on these typical specimens subject to lateral loads. The results show that the elastic buckling of a SSWS was always controlled by the local buckling of the steel tube section. The nonlinear analyses concerning both the geometric and material nonlinearities indicate that a SSWS is very ductile at the inelastic stage with the ductility coefficient being greater than 20 for some of these specimens. Good energy dissipation of the SSWS was also found in the cyclic loading analysis. Based on these analyses, simple solutions to the elastic stiffness, the yield load and the ultimate load for a SSWS in shear were proposed. The requirements for the section of steel tubes and connections between adjacent steel tubes to ensure good shear performance of a SSWS were also discussed.