After his release from prison, he maintained his ties with the Nazi Party and the Oberland League. He became the German consul general in Shanghai.
In 1929, he arrived in China to work as an arms dealer and an adviser to the Kuomintang government of Chiang Kai-shek.[1] Besides fighting the Chinese Communists, the Kuomintang regime was at the time fighting the armies of Chinese warlords, namely General Feng Yuxiang in the north and the Guangxi clique of General Bai Chongxi and Li Zongren in the south.[1] Accordingly, as China had hardly any arms manufacturing factories of its own at the time, arms had to be imported.[1] Kriebel found that the demand for arms in China was enormous, making the work of an arms dealer very profitable.[1]