Reactjs: how to modify dynamic child component state or props from parent?

I am not sure why you say that using cloneWithProps is a bad solution, but here is a working example using it.

var Hello = React.createClass({
    render: function() {
        return <div>Hello {this.props.name}</div>;
    }
});

var App = React.createClass({
    render: function() {
        return (
            <Group ref="buttonGroup">
                <Button key={1} name="Component A"/>
                <Button key={2} name="Component B"/>
                <Button key={3} name="Component C"/>
            </Group>
        );
    }
});

var Group = React.createClass({
    getInitialState: function() {
        return {
            selectedItem: null
        };
    },

    selectItem: function(item) {
        this.setState({
            selectedItem: item
        });
    },

    render: function() {
        var selectedKey = (this.state.selectedItem && this.state.selectedItem.props.key) || null;
        var children = this.props.children.map(function(item, i) {
            var isSelected = item.props.key === selectedKey;
            return React.addons.cloneWithProps(item, {
                isSelected: isSelected,
                selectItem: this.selectItem,
                key: item.props.key
            });
        }, this);

        return (
            <div>
                <strong>Selected:</strong> {this.state.selectedItem ? this.state.selectedItem.props.name : 'None'}
                <hr/>
                {children}
            </div>
        );
    }

});

var Button = React.createClass({
    handleClick: function() {
        this.props.selectItem(this);
    },

    render: function() {
        var selected = this.props.isSelected;
        return (
            <div
                onClick={this.handleClick}
                className={selected ? "selected" : ""}
            >
                {this.props.name} ({this.props.key}) {selected ? "<---" : ""}
            </div>
        );
    }

});


React.renderComponent(<App />, document.body);

Here’s a jsFiddle showing it in action.

EDIT: here’s a more complete example with dynamic tab content : jsFiddle