High-resolution carbonate stratigraphy of the deep-sea core MD972151from the southwestern South China Sea shows millennial-scale variabilitysimilar to oxygen isotopic fluctuations recorded in ice cores from Greenland.In a long term of glacial-interglacial scale,carbonate contents in the interglacialtime(up to 25% by weight)were higher than that in the glacialperiods(5-15% by weight).Even for the last glacial,carbonate contentsare relatively high in the interstadial events and low in the stadial horizons.This demonstrates clearly that carbonate content in the continental slopeabove the lysocline in the southwestern South China Sea is primarily controlled by dilution of terrigenous inputs,which in turn is due to sea-levelfluctuations in response to changes of ice volume in high latitude regions.