Soil erosion has a significant impact on the distribution and sequestration of soil carbon, affecting the global C cycle. Although the transport and transformation of soil organic carbon (SOC) during the erosion process have been widely studied, there is still a lack of understanding of the impacts of soil erosion on soil inorganic carbon (SIC) and its relationships with SOC. In this study, 62 erosional sites (including 16 gullies, 17 grasslands, 16 forestlands and 13 croplands) and 35 depositional sites (check dams) on the Chinese Loess Plateau were selected. Partial least squares regression (PLSR) was carried out to explore the main influential factors of SIC variation. The results showed that, compared with erosional sites, the mean SOC and SIC content in depositional sites (0–25 cm) increased by 24.4 % and 15.4 %, respectively. Both SOC and SIC contents in depositional sites exhibited a decreasing tendency with depth. SIC was significantly negatively correlated with SOC (R2 = 0.25, P < 0.01) across all erosional sites (0–25 cm). In contrast, SIC was significantly positively correlated with SOC in all depositional layers beneath 100 cm (P < 0.05), and R2 increased from 0.23 (100–200 cm) to 0.68 (300–400 cm) and then decreased to 0.46 (500–600 cm). Sediment transport and deposition converted the negative relationship between SOC and SIC in the erosional sites to a positive relationship in deep depositional soil. The PLSR analysis suggested that SOC had an important (VIP > 1) positive impact on predicting SIC in depositional sites, which indicated that SOC increase contributed to enhancing SIC accumulation under the depositional conditions in the semi-arid region. We believe that the influencing mechanism of soil erosion on the relationship between SOC and SIC revealed in this study will contribute to understanding the soil C cycle.