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This paper examines ethnographic data collected over six months from Xiamen, China, on children as active agents in their relationships with their parents and grandparents. It explicates the usefulness of the conceptual tools of 'agency' and 'interdependent power' derived from social relational theory in demonstrating the bilateral influences between children, grandparents and parents. Ways in which children's agency is enhanced in their interactions with the adult caregivers are explicated. It provides a reinterpretation of the 'little emperor' syndrome in contemporary urban China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]