Accelerated human activity has greatly reduced sediment discharge into the global oceans in recent decades; however, the potential influence on climate change signals carried by sediments during source-to-sink transport processes remains poorly understood. To this end, multiple sedimentological analyses, including X-ray fluorescence scanning, grain-size composition, clay mineralogy, and ²¹⁰Pb dating, of three short sediment cores retrieved from the Taiwan Strait, East Asia were performed. The results show that the terrigenous sediments of these cores spanning the last 150 years are mainly derived from the Yangtze River, with relatively small contributions from the Taiwan, Zhejiang, and Fujian rivers. The grain-size compositions are predominantly silt and clay (>90%), with minor sand, and the clay mineral assemblages consist of primarily illite, smectite, and chlorite, with moderate kaolinite. Both the clay mineral assemblage and grain-size compositions inferred from both end-member (EM) modeling and standard deviation analysis provide indirect indicators to reveal the East Asian monsoon variations, realized mainly through the current transport processes. The decreased smectite/(illite + chlorite) ratios since the 1850s represent a relatively long-term weakened East Asian winter monsoon (EAWM), while the overall decreased mean grain-size of the fine sensitive component and EM3/(EM1 + EM2) ratio during the 1850s–1950s also implies a gradually weakened EAWM associated with the synchronously weakened Zhe-Min Coastal Current. These sedimentary records of the East Asian monsoon variations can be compared with numerous published paleoclimate records. However, the largely increased mean grain-size of the fine sensitive component and EM3/(EM1 + EM2) ratios since the 1950s indicates a false strengthened EAWM signal, which conflicts with instrumental data and the clay mineralogy record. This observation, coupled with the coarsened terrigenous grain-size and reduced terrigenous fluxes (decreased Ti/Ca ratios), is mainly attributed to intense anthropogenic influences associated mainly with dam proliferation. Therefore, disturbed climate change information preserved in the terrigenous sediments can be linked to increased anthropogenic activities, perhaps representing an additional feature during the Anthropocene epoch.