Secret life of Ivanka Trump’s mini-me daughter: Arabella, 15, is fluent in Mandarin… calls China’s leader ‘Grandpa Xi’… and ‘wants to be like mom’

When Xi Jinping visited the White House last week, the Chinese president wasn’t just met by President Donald Trump, but one of the youngest members of his family.

Arabella Kushner, the teenage daughter of Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, was front and center during her grandfather’s meeting with the foreign leader, in town for highly anticipated diplomatic talks.

Dressed in a belted, ivory crepe midi dress by Self-Portrait – a London-based brand founded by Malaysian designer Han Chong that is favored by Catherine, Princess of Wales, former First Lady Michelle Obama and former White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt – Arabella wore her hair parted in the center and pushed back over her shoulders.

Her resemblance to her mother was striking, her poise notable.

The 15-year-old had a front row seat next to her mother, to watch her grandfather and Xi take turns delivering remarks.

Some pointed out that she had a better spot than several top-ranking members of the president’s cabinet, including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

‘Ivanka is very involved in [Arabella’s] life, as with all her kids,’ a source close to the Trump family told the Daily Mail. ‘Arabella is only in the spotlight when there are things she actually thinks are cool and wants to go to, like UFC fights, random sporting events and things like that.’

Arabella may be young, but she has, the Daily Mail has been told, ‘started to ask to tag along to things more and more.’ And, as recent days have shown, increasingly her mother is saying, ‘Yes.’

She attended a glitzy star-studded state dinner for Xi alongside members of the Trump family, as well as tech titans OpenAI boss Sam Altman and Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg over the weekend.

‘Ivanka is really protective of her and sees her as sort of a mini-me,’ the source said. ‘She helped dress her for the State Dinner, had a photo shoot with the girls behind the scenes, and is really letting her start to bloom.

‘Ivanka is finally starting to be less hesitant on having her come along to events. Arabella wants to be like her mom.’

Certainly, the two share many interests – like her mother, Arabella is a keen equestrian and practices Brazilian jiu-jitsu.

As for her most recent public outing, the eldest of Ivanka’s three children was well-suited to attend the events with Xi having started learning Mandarin as a babe in arms from her Chinese-born nanny, Xixi.

In a 2012 interview with Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post, Ivanka said that Arabella, then only a one-year-old, ‘doesn’t speak much yet, but she seems to know as many words in Mandarin in terms of understanding what they mean as she does in English.’

By the age of three, she was taking lessons at the Carousel of Languages, which is billed as one of the premier foreign language programs for infants, toddlers and young children in New York City.

One of her tutors there was Jing Maxine (Yongtai), who worked with her and her younger brother, Joseph, from 2013 to 2015.

When the toddler arrived at school, she was already ‘fluently speaking Mandarin,’ according to Jing, who came to the US from eastern China in 2008 for a bachelor’s in childhood education.

The Daily Mail has reached out to representatives of the Kushner family. 

Speaking to the Daily Mail, Jing recalled the then preschooler, as ‘really energetic, really talkative, really down to earth.’

‘She never got frustrated,’ Jing said, and was ‘very easygoing’ during their summer sessions. A rarity since learning a language requires so much focus from such small children.

Jing remembered Arabella taking charge more than most of the other students: ‘Sometimes she would play the role of teacher assistant in my class. She was very sassy. A tough New York City kid.’

In 2017, at the age of five, Arabella garnered headlines for singing in Mandarin to Xi when he visited Trump at Mar-a-Lago.

Later that same year, she was back in the news after her grandfather shared a video of her singing a traditional Chinese folk song for Xi during a trip to Beijing.

The song about the country’s beautiful landscapes held a special meaning for the Chinese leader; it was the same one that his wife, singer Peng Liyuan, had once performed on Chinese television.

‘We wanted to make you feel at home,’ Ivanka told Xi before sharing the video, which later played on a big screen for all the state dinner attendees to see.

Xi appeared to appreciate the sentiment, saying, Arabella’s performance, which began with her addressing the Chinese leader and his wife as ‘Grandpa Xi’ and ‘Grandma Peng,’ ‘deserved an A+,’ according to Chinese news agency Xinhuanet.

Xi also complimented the young girl’s proficiency in the Chinese language, which Jing appreciated hearing as one of her first tutors. Her friends back home, she said, were also touched by Arabella’s ability to speak their language.

‘A couple of my friends, they texted me, like, “You see her? You see her? She is on the TV again,” she recalled. ‘When people show interest in you, you think, “Oh, maybe you want to understand me better.” It showed a “warmness” that the Chinese people still appreciate to this day,’ she said.

After the video received millions of views on Chinese social media, a spokesperson for the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs called Arabella a ‘small messenger of Sino-US friendship’ during a briefing, stating: ‘I believe it will also help to narrow the feelings and distance between the peoples of China and the United States.’

At the time, Jing said, she wasn’t surprised to hear that the baby-faced Arabella had charmed Xi: ‘She was always a performer.’

Jing, who is now the program director at Talent Prep, a New York City learning center focused on school admissions, has always taken a hands-on approach to teaching, helping kids learn Chinese through puzzles, games, music and role play.

‘Arabella, she loved the theater section [of the class],’ Jing said. ‘She always wanted to take the central role. She liked having the most speaking lines.’

Arabella’s fluency in Mandarin is among the sweeter things her braggadocious grandfather has been known to boast about.

In 2017, during a freewheeling New York Times interview, Arabella wandered into the Oval Office. Trump immediately started showing off his granddaughter’s ability to speak Mandarin, asking her to say ‘hello’ and ‘I love you, grandpa’ for the reporter.

‘She’s great. She speaks fluent Chinese. She’s amazing,’ he said. ‘She spoke with President Xi [Jinping of China],’ he added, before doing a little more bragging. ‘She’s unbelievable, huh? Good, smart genes.’

Jing has not spoken to her former student, who is now based in Florida, for nearly a decade, but she remembers her as a precocious child with a good head on her shoulders.

‘To learn a language, you have to be invested in the culture,’ Jing said. Arabella ‘wanted to understand Chinese culture’ even at a very young age.

‘The Chinese people, they really adore her. They really admire her,’ she said.

Whether Arabella harbors any political ambitions remains to be seen but, according to Jing, she has already shown herself to be a natural in fostering international relations. 

When it comes to America and China, her former tutor said: ‘She could be the bridge between the two countries.’