China's 'Javanka' fanatics dismayed as first daughter cancels visit

Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner believed to have cancelled September trip amid cooling of relations between Washington and Beijing

Tom Phillips in Beijing
Saturday 9 September 2017 05.00 BST

‘Javanka’ fans across China had been counting the days until the power couple’s arrival.

“They’re a role model couple ... highly motivated and positive. That’s what lifts me up when I feel down,” raved Chen Bo, a media executive from the southern city of Guangzhou.

Guo Anni, a Beijing-based advertising rep, hailed Donald Trump’s eldest daughter as a paragon of female beauty and power: “I just buy Ivanka’s whole outlook on life.”

Yet this month’s hotly anticipated trip to China by the president’s daughter and son-in-law, Jared Kushner, now appears to have been scrapped, amid renewed anxieties over the state of relations between Washington and Beijing.

The September stay was conceived as a glamour-packed but intensely political tour that would pave the way for a state visit from the president himself later this year. But Kushner, a 36-year-old property tycoon who is among the president’s top aides, declined China’s invitation to visit, the New York Times reported this week.

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