[Background] The national key project has been implemented in the fifth period (2013—2017), taking up a lot of financial, material resources and manpower, however, the investigation and research about the control effects of the national key project on soil erosion were not conducted yet. Therefore, the study of the control effect of the national key project of soil and water conservation on soil erosion in the two project regions may provide the reference for understanding and evaluation of the national key project. [Methods] In this study, we selected two typical project areas, Yimeng mountain area of Shandong Province and Dabie mountain area of Anhui Province, in Huaihe River Basin. Using remote sensing and ground survey to study the change of soil erosion in the project status after the national key project, and analyzing the effect of soil erosion in project regions with different measures. [Results] 1) The reduction rates of soil erosion area in Dayu project region of Yimeng mountain and Taoling project region of Dabie mountain were 88.9% and 76.3% respectively, the reduction rates of soil erosion odulus were 76.7% and 72.1%, and soil erosion modulus were 243 t/ (km²·a) and 314 t/ (km²·a). The effect of prevention and control of soil erosion in Dayu project region was higher than in Taoling project region, which mainly resulted from two reasons: the allocations of the measures in 2 regions were different, and the control effects of the different measures varied. Yimeng mountain and Dabie mountain belonged to two different climatic regions, correspondingly, their leading foundations of soil and water conservation were in different functional areas. Therefore, the occurrence characteristics of soil and water loss, and the prevention and control measures of soil erosion were different. 2) The reduction rate of soil erosion modulus in the terraced project of slope farmland on the 2 regions was 82.5% and 83.8% respectively. The reduction rate of soil erosion modulus in the level-terrace project of afforested slope land was 70.32%. The reduction rate of soil erosion modulus in the enclosure and replanting, and in open forest land was 39.5%, and 55.2% respectively. [Conclusions] There were great reductions of soil erosion and soil erosion modulus after the national key project implemented in the two project regions. The prevention and control effects of soil erosion with different measures were different in the regions of the national key project. The effects of prevention and control of soil erosion in terrace project and level- terrace project were much better than enclosure and replanting, and terrace project better than level- terrace project.