Two competing factors, the global cooling and the uplift of Tibetan Plateau, have been proposed to drive the central Asian aridification, but their relative role has seldom been discriminated in paleoclimate and paleoenvironment records. Here, we reconstruct a 14-million-year-long record of paleohydrology and paleoecology in the western Qaidam Basin by applying the compound-specific hydrogen (delta H-2) and carbon (delta C-13) isotope analyses to terrestrial leaf wax long-chain n-alkanes. The delta H-2 values are low during the interval of 14.6 to 13.0 Ma. Then the delta H-2 increases from 13.0 to 12.2 Ma and maintains high values from 12.2 to 3.2 Ma with a peak high value of -156.1 parts per thousand at 8.0 Ma. After 3.2 Ma, the delta H-2 values are low and vary larger than 30 parts per thousand. The delta C-13 values decrease from 14.6 to 13.0 Ma and are low from 13.0 to 3.2 Ma except a high value at 3.8 Ma. Then they decrease slightly after 3.2 Ma. Low delta H-2 values indicate relatively wet climate between 14.6 and 13.0 Ma. The decreasing delta C-13 values during the same time period support the ecologic shift with the decline of warm component of conifers after the Mid-Miocene Climatic Optimum. High delta H-2 values since 13.0 Ma are synchronous with the uplift of northern Tibetan Plateau, implying tectonics-driven aridity. Large-amplitude variation in delta H-2 values since ca. 3.2 Ma seen in East and West Qaidam and lower delta C-13 values reveal the climatic cyclic responses to the Northern Hemisphere Glaciation.