Five hundred and seventy Chinese children aged between 36 and 65 months were recruited for refractive examination. The results show that both the spherical and cylindrical components of the refractive error tend to decrease with increasing age, although the changes were not statistically significant. The results of the present study, together with those of earlier studies carried out on Hong Kong Chinese children of different ages, show a pattern in the change of refractive errors in local children during the first 17 years of life. The combined results show that the average spherical refractive error decreases rapidly in hyperopic power during the 1st and the 6th to the 10th years of life; the astigmatic power decreases rapidly in the 1st year of life and remains thereafter rather constant until the age of 17 years.