“…As direct weathering products of continental bedrocks, clay minerals are the most important components of terrigenous sediments, providing one of the most powerful tools for reconstructing the long-term East Asian monsoon evolution in the SCS (Boulay et al, 2005;Chen et al, 2017;Clift et al, 2014;Liu et al, 2003Liu et al, , 2004Wan et al, 2007). During the typical glacial-interglacial cycles, increase of illite and chlorite contents under reinforced physical erosion is considered to be associated with strengthened winter monsoon, while increase of smectite and kaolinite contents is related to intensive chemical weathering and then indicates strengthened summer monsoon (Liu et al, 2003(Liu et al, , 2004.…”