Litter, as an essential component of the forest ecosystem, plays an important role in maintaining site fertility, sequestering carbon, and nurturing soil biodiversity. In order to explore litter decomposition at different restoration stages of Loropetalum chinense communities in the karst area of the Lijiang river watershed, we used the litter bag method to study the initial dynamic of litter decomposition. The results showed that after 1 year of decomposition, litter mass loss of L. chinense communities followed the order shrub stage > shrub-tree stage > tree stage. The predicated period of litter decomposition 50% and 95% for shrub stage, shrub-tree stage and tree stage was 1.28a and 5.54a,1.38a and 5.97a,as well as 1.41a and 6.09a, respectively.After 1 year of decomposition, the content of organic carbon had the increasing trend in shrub stage and shrub-tree stage, and had the declining trend in tree stage. There was an overall increase in the initial content of N and cellulose at each restoration stage. However, the initial content of P in the shrub and tree stages generally declined compared with that in the shrub-tree stage. In addition, we found that the organic carbon content increased in the shrub and shrub-tree stages and declined in the tree stage. In addition, the lignin content in the shrub and shrub-tree stages generally increased while in the tree stage it generally declined. There was a significant correlation between litter decomposition rate and organic carbon, N, P, C/P, N/P contents in the shrub stage; between litter decomposition rate and N, lignin/N in the shrub-tree stage; and between litter decomposition rate and N, cellulose, C/N, lignin/N in the tree stage.