Jared Kushner just received an invitation to China

The Kushners have business ties to China that could make their trip there controversial

By Matthew Rozsa

Staff Writer

Published June 20, 2017 2:59PM (EDT)

Jared Kushner   (AP/Susan Walsh)
Jared Kushner (AP/Susan Walsh)

Jared Kushner, the president's son-in-law whose familial ties have made him a major power broker in Washington, has been invited to Beijing by the Chinese government.

The visit would occur later this year and may be in anticipation of a trip by the president himself, according to a report by Bloomberg. The exact details of the trip remain sketchy and it has not yet been officially announced. The most recent confirmed China-related news for Jared Kushner and his wife, presidential daughter Ivanka, is that they hosted a dinner at the Trump International Hotel for America's new ambassador to China, former Iowa governor Terry Brandstad.

There are a number of conflicts of interest that will present themselves if the Kushners are suddenly given a major amount of clout in bilateral relations between the United States and China. The Chinese government has granted a number of trademarks to Ivanka, the Kushner family real estate empire has tried to cultivate Chinese investment by using the EB-5 immigrant investor visa program and the Kushner family was also reported to have attempted at one point to receive an investment from Anbang Insurance Group, which has connections to the Chinese government.

Interestingly enough, the Kushners' 5-year-old daughter, Arabella, has become something of a cultural sensation in China, according to The New York Times. Her rendition of a song she learned for Chinese New Year was a hit on social media in that country, and her appearance at the Chinese Embassy in Washington in February caused the state-run newspaper the Global Times to comment that she "endowed [a] certain political and diplomatic significance" that "could be invigorating to the China-U.S. relationship."


By Matthew Rozsa

Matthew Rozsa is a staff writer at Salon. He received a Master's Degree in History from Rutgers-Newark in 2012 and was awarded a science journalism fellowship from the Metcalf Institute in 2022.

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