Future climate change is expected to alter the primary productivity of forest ecosystems, and thus potentially change the quality and quantity of aboveground litter inputs which could affect soil carbon emission and sequestration. A litter manipulation experiment was carried out in 19-year-old Mytilaria laosensis and Cunninghamia lanceolata plantations replanted in C.lanceolata woodland in subtropical China between January 2012 and February 2013. Three treatments including litter exclusion, reciprocal litter transplant and control were conducted within 2 m ×2 m plots in randomized block design. Soil respiration rate (R_s) were measured monthly by Li-Cor 8100 and soil temperature and soil moisture were also monitored. The results showed that R_s subject to three treatments exhibited similar seasonal patterns in M.laosensis and C.lanceolata plots. The average R_s in litter exclusion, litter transplant and control treatments were 1.79, 2.18, 2.45μmol CO₂ m^-2 s^-1 in M.laosensis plots and 1.77, 2.29, 1.90μmol CO₂ m^-2 s^-1 in C.lanceolata plots, respectively. Overall, litter exclusion and transplant significantly decreased the annual fluxes under M.laosensis plots by 29.8% and 14.2%, respectively. Litter exclusion caused a slight decline in annual flux but litter transplant markedly increased the annual flux by 37.8% in C.lanceolata plots. Using the decay constants of the two litter species in a reciprocal litter transplant decomposition experiment, priming effects were calculated as the amount of litter-derived respiration minus decomposed carbon from litter. Results showed that M.laosensis litter aroused higher priming effect than C.lanceolata litter, suggesting that the quantity and quality of litter input caused by different tree species could result in different below-ground responses. Correlations showed that R_s were exponentially correlated with the soil temperature and negatively correlated with the soil moisture under both M.laosensis and C.lanceolata plots. Non-liner regressions of soil temperature and soil moisture together accounted for 68.9%-77.0% and 36.2%-63.8% of monthly variation in soil respiration in M.laosensis and C.lanceolata plots, respectively, indicating that other factors were responsible for interpreting variations in R_s. The average R_s was significantly correlated to soil dissolved organic carbon concentration (P=0.019) and microbial biomass carbon concentration (P=0.037), which suggests that litter manipulation induced changes in soil labile carbon caused significant effects on R_s. A one time-point measured soil PLFA profiles showed that the average R_s was significantly correlated with the biomass of main signature PLFAs such as fungi (18:1 w9c, 18:2 w6,9c), which may imply that the high quality of litter input could alter soil microbial biomass and thus affect R_s. The temperature sensitivity (Q₁₀) of R_s decreased to 1.86 and 2.05 in the litter exclusion and transplant plots compared to 2.14 in the control plots under M.laosensis plantations. However, the Q₁₀ in the litter exclusion, litter transplanting and control plots were 1.40, 1.52 and 1.52 in C.lanceolata plantations, respectively, which are lower than other studies in subtropical China. In summary, we concluded that the effects of litter manipulation on R_s were dependent on tree species, the contributions of litter toR_s. can be attributed to the quantity and quality of litter input, the changes in soil labile carbon and soil microbial biomass in subtropical forest plantations.