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Oxygen isotope records from stalagmites in caves in southern China, interpreted as proxy rainfall records reflecting the intensity of the East Asian summer monsoon, indicate gradual monsoon weakening for the last ~9000 years, as also documented for the Indian monsoon. Coupled with high-precision dating, the speleothem proxy records have been used to test monsoon links with orbital forcing, solar changes, iceberg discharges in the North Atlantic, ocean currents and atmospheric methane. However, these `benchmark' cave records do not match other published, dated E Asian proxy rainfall records (specifically here, independently calibrated rainfall records from loess/palaeosol magnetic properties, and cave oxygen isotope intercomparisons), which show variable E Asian monsoon intensity through the entire Holocene. The strong correlation of the cave records with the extraregional Indian monsoon record yet …