At a time of strained and erratic relations between the U.S. and China, Ivanka Trump, the President’s daughter and, more recently, a member of his administration, has emerged as an unlikely but singularly potent emissary, not to just to China’s leaders but to many of its citizens. After a clip of her daughter Arabella singing “Happy New Year” in Mandarin went viral in February, she brought her children to serenade Xi Jinping during his early April visit to her father’s Mar-a-Lago resort. But her appeal goes beyond contrived moments of familial diplomacy. “Even Chinese commentators who are utterly skeptical of the President have pointed to Ivanka as the most respectable of an otherwise dubious cohort,” Jiayang Fan writes in The New Yorker. And some Chinese netizens nevertheless (contradictorily) accept Ivanka as both a self-made woman and an heir to a powerful dynasty. Why is this? And what does it mean for U.S.-China relations during the Trump administration?