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To investigate the splitting tensile characteristics of a new building material, namely magnesium-based wood-like material (MWM), the cubic splitting tensile tests were carried out at a loading rate of 200 N/s. Full-field displacements and crack behaviors were measured using Digital Image Correlation, and the splitting tensile strength is 1.79 MPa. The elastic Young modulus, Poisson’s ratio, and axial compressive strength were measured as 2.21 GPa, 0.21, 8.76 MPa respectively. In the splitting tensile tests, primary cracks were observed to initiate from the geometric centre of the specimen and then extend to the loading ends where secondary cracks appeared. A new method for identifying cracking modes showed the secondary cracks were mainly caused by shear and tensile-shear failure, whereas the primary cracks were caused by tensile failure. An accurate method for estimating the elastic Young modulus, simultaneously with the determination of the splitting tensile strength of MWM cubes is proposed.