She first appeared as an infant on the cover of the Kantner/Slick 1971 solo LP Sunfighter. She has been given co-songwriting credits by her father on several of his songs. She also sang a song on his 1983 album Planet Earth Rock and Roll Orchestra.

Kantner has several songwriting credits on various Jefferson Starship albums. The first is for the song "Don't Let It Rain", from the 1976 album Spitfire. This was followed by credits for "Things to Come" (Freedom at Point Zero, 1979), "Out of Control" (Winds of Change, 1982), and "The Sky Is No Limit" on her father's 1983 solo album Planet Earth Rock and Roll Orchestra.

In July 1986, she appeared as a guest VJ on MTV, which led to her making regular appearances for the next four years during her summer vacations. When she started working for the station at the age of 15, she was, at the time, the youngest MTV VJ ever. As an MTV VJ, she interviewed her father for the MTV Summer of Love 20th anniversary celebrations. For a while around 1989, she also presented a Saturday night phone-in request show on a local Bay Area radio station, KRQR-FM.

While working for MTV, she was sometimes credited on-screen as "China Slick Kantner", although this was never her legal name. Later in her MTV career, she was credited simply as "China Kantner". In January 1988, she was interviewed by Jonathan King for the BBC TV show Entertainment USA as part of a feature on the children of rock stars working as MTV VJs. During this interview, she stated that, while she initially did not like her name, she grew to like it as she got older.

Having started off acting in school plays, Kantner has appeared in several movies (such as Airheads, The Stoned Age and The Evening Star), television sitcoms (notably Home Improvement) and stage plays. Between acting roles, she studied psychology at Santa Monica College, having relocated from San Francisco to Los Angeles in the early 1990s. Her 1998 appearance in season seven of Home Improvement as the recurring character Willow Branch Leaf Wilson (She 'pruned' the name back) was her final professional acting role, and she has now retired from acting. In late 2001, following an interview in Vanity Fair, she also stopped giving interviews. She did, however, provide a few brief quotes for Jeff Tamarkin's book on the history of Jefferson Airplane.

Kantner appeared as credited lead vocalist on the song "Declaration Of Independence" and contributing vocalist on "The Sky Is No Limit" and "Let's Go", all of which appear on Planet Earth Rock And Roll Orchestra. She also made an uncredited appearance on the songs "Wooden Ships" and "Volunteers" on the 1995 live album Deep Space/Virgin Sky, which was later re-released in an expanded form as Deeper Space/Extra Virgin Sky.

After retiring from acting, she studied art history at UCLA. In 2007, she obtained a degree in Christian theology (with a minor in English) at Loyola Marymount University. In a 2007 interview, her mother stated, "My daughter loves studying Jesus. Some friends of hers turn their nose up at that. They don't understand that she is not talking about churches and what churches say; she is studying the actual words and message of Jesus."

Like her mother, Kantner has, over the years, struggled with alcoholism. She has been sober since about 1998. She contributed a section to the book Playing It Straight by David Dodd, alongside her mother and other recovering substance abusers, such as Dennis Hopper, Steven Tyler and Ozzy Osbourne. In 1999, she married a Los Angeles dentist, Jamie Azdair, although the couple divorced in 2006. While they were married, she preferred to be known by her married name of China Azdair. On 13 April 2011, Kantner married actor and Producer Seth Isler and, again taking her husband's name, now prefers to be known as China Isler.