Understanding the response of soil erosion to past climate change is a critical aspect of simulating and predicting future patterns. However, the long-term evolution of regional high-resolution soil erosion and its driving mechanisms remain poorly understood. In this paper, we describe a high-resolution soil erosion sequence covering the past 300 yr based on X-ray fluorescence data from a sediment core recovered from Lake Chaonaqiu in the Liupan Mountains, on the western Chinese Loess Plateau. Principal component analysis of these data revealed that PC1 exhibits synchronous variations with the terrestrial clastic mineral content (i.e., quartz, biotite, and albite), and thus reflects the input of exogenous detrital sediment and soil erosion in the Liupan Mountains. Five periods of enhanced soil erosion were identified: 1770-1780, 1840-1850, 1880-1900, 1920-1930, and ca. 1970 CE, and these periods correspond to intense flooding events recorded in historical documents from the counties around Lake Chaonaqiu. This indicates that soil erosion was caused mainly by flooding events and highintensity rainfall. A comparison of PC1 with other precipitation and vegetation indices, as well as precipitation variations in nearby areas, indicates that the intensity of soil erosion on the western Chinese Loess Plateau was controlled mainly by precipitation and vegetation cover that responded to the Asian-Pacific Oscillationcontrolled East Asian summer monsoon. These results highlight the importance of vegetation restoration throughout the catchment in managing and preventing soil erosion and improving water conservation on the Chinese Loess Plateau, and also emphasize the role of the internal variability of the Earth's climate system in controlling the signals generated by soil erosion in this region over decadal to multi-decadal scales.