The legal system in the early People's Republic of China (PRC) was nothing but a natural and logical extension of its precursor in the revolutionary war period (i.e. 1927-1949). Both were consistently based on the Party ideology, goals, class line, and, above all, the Party's fundamental insecurity and its fear of the loss of power. The major difference is that the early PRC was no longer just a regional and fledgling political power, it now controlled almost all of mainland China. Yet, as in previous periods, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) continued to fear sabotage from within and threats from without.

From the outset, the CCP had learned from Marx and Lenin that a socialist government and public ownership of the principal means of production was incompatible with capitalism and private ownership. Therefore, in an aspirational Communist China, all of the capitalist state apparatus, including its army, police, and judicial system, had to be scrapped. In January 1949, as the People's Liberation Army (PLA) was poised to take over China, Mao declared that the CCP would abolish all the Nationalist Party (Guomindang, or GMD) laws and legal institutions. “Any legal institution, constitution, and law can only be created by a certain class in the midst of a class struggle,” the CCP proclaimed in a statement, “the nature of the constitution and legal institution [in a country] is determined solely by the nature of the polity.”