Trump's granddaughter welcomes Xi in Mandarin, 9 years after singing a Chinese folk song for him

Arabella Kushner, U.S. President Donald Trump's 15-year-old granddaughter, greeted Chinese President Xi Jinping in Mandarin at the White House last week, nine years after she first sang for the Chinese leader.

She told Xi and his wife, Peng Liyuan, "Welcome to America" in Chinese at the arrival ceremony on Sept. 24, and the couple said they could hardly believe how much she had grown, according to the New York Post.

Wearing a white belted midi dress by British label Self-Portrait, she sat in the front row between her mother, Ivanka Trump, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio as the two leaders delivered remarks. Vice President JD Vance and second lady Usha Vance were seated on Ivanka's other side.

That evening, Arabella attended her first state dinner in the East Room, wearing a black floor-length gown. She sat between her mother and Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh at a table shared with other members of the court, the Post reported.

Xi's Sept. 23-25 state visit, his first to Washington in more than a decade, reciprocated Trump's state visit to Beijing in May.

In April 2017, when Xi visited Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, Arabella, then 5, and her brother Joseph, then 3, performed the Chinese folk song "Mo Li Hua" (Jasmine Flower) for Xi and Peng, Xinhua reported.

That November, during his first-term visit to Beijing, Trump showed the Chinese couple a tablet video of Arabella singing in Mandarin and reciting the "Three Character Classic", a traditional primer for Chinese children, over tea at the Forbidden City.

Xi said her Chinese deserved an "A+," Xinhua reported, and the full video was played on screens at the state banquet in the Great Hall of the People the following night, according to AFP.

Hua Chunying, then a spokeswoman for China's Foreign Ministry, called Arabella "a little ambassador of Chinese-American friendship" at a regular briefing, adding that she had won wide affection among the Chinese public, AFP reported.

Arabella Kushner (front) at the White House on Sept. 24, 2026. Photo by AP

Arabella began learning Mandarin at 18 months, Xinhua reported in 2017, and was taught by a Chinese nanny, according to Reuters.

In February 2017, weeks after Trump's first inauguration, Ivanka took Arabella to the Chinese Embassy's Lunar New Year reception in Washington, where the girl sang in Mandarin, Reuters reported.

Her father, Jared Kushner, and then-Chinese Ambassador Cui Tiankai arranged a fence-mending phone call between Trump and Xi later that month, U.S. officials told the agency.