Abstract: Red soil and purple soil are widely distributed in the upper and middle area of Changjiang River basin. In this study, the runoff and sediment yield characteristics of the two types of soil are compared by simulated rainfall experiments. The results of this study are able to provide a background database for supporting a coordinated deployment of control measures to alleviate water and soil loss along the Changjiang River. In the simulated rainfall experiments, the rainfall duration was set to 60 min while three rainfall intensities (0.8 mm/min, 1.1 mm/min, 1.4 mm/min) and four slope gradients (10°, 15°, 20°, 25°) were included as the variables for both types of soil. The results show that: (1) the initial erosion time of two types soil were shortened by the increasing rainfall intensities, and the initial erosion time of red soil was shorter than that of purple soil; (2) under the same rainfall intensities and slope gradients, the runoff depths were deeper and less time was needed to reach the runoff steady stage in the red soil cases compared with that of purple soil cases; (3) the erosion rate of red soil under a lower rainfall intensity was larger than that of purple soil while the situation was reversed under a higher rainfall intensity. These may result from the difference in the soil texture of the two types of soil .As the content of clayey particles are higher in red soil, most of the water ran off from the slope surface, which was formed by red soil, rather than infiltrates into the slope under the light rainfall. Therefore, the slopes formed by red soil suffered more intensive inter-rill erosion, inducing higher erosion rates than those of purple soil. However, the situation was reversed when under the heavy rainfall. As most of water also ran off from slopes surfaces formed by purple soil and the silty particle content is higher in purple soil, the type of erosion on the purple soil slope was changed from inter-rill erosion to rill erosion, accelerating the soil erosion rates to higher levels than those of red soil.