Throughout the House subcommittee’s hearing on the Biden administration’s 2024 budget requests for its Indo-Pacific strategy, Kritenbrink maintained that “we are committed to using all tools at our disposal and we do intend to use all tools available” to respond to threats posed by China.
US climate envoy John Kerry became the third senior figure in the Biden administration to visit China in recent weeks, following Blinken’s trip, which was postponed in February, a day before he was due to depart for Beijing, because of the Chinese balloon’s entry into American airspace.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen visited the Chinese capital earlier this month, and speculation has been growing that Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo plans to visit.
Tuesday’s hearing comes amid increasing scepticism, mostly among Republicans, as to whether a revival in high-level bilateral talks serves American interests.
Republican congressman Andy Barr of Kentucky, for example, asked Kritenbrink whether any Chinese official had conditioned a rescheduled trip on assurances that the FBI would not release its findings on the balloon. He asked the official to name “one tangible win” that resulted from Blinken’s trip.
“We’ve never accepted any conditions on the secretary travelling to Beijing, and we made clear that only after the secretary visited would there be” further visits by senior Biden administration officials, Kritenbrink replied.
Democratic congressman Brad Sherman of California also grilled Kritenbrink on the matter and suggested that he expected to get a briefing on the matter by US intelligence officials.
“We deliberately didn’t shoot down the balloon over Alaska or Montana because we wanted to see everything that was on it, and we allowed the balloon to go over military bases, all in an effort to find out what was on the balloon” Sherman said.
“They haven’t told you and they haven’t told me what was on the balloon, so I look forward to working with this subcommittee and full committee to get a classified briefing on that,” he added.
Republicans further hammered Kritenbrink for not moving more quickly to fulfil congressional authorisations to provide military support to Taiwan – a self-ruled island over which Beijing claims sovereignty – and issue sanctions against Chinese entities deemed responsible for alleged human rights violations.
