For years, China adhered to Deng Xiaoping’s famous maxim that it should “hide its brightness and nourish obscurity.” Deng led the country’s radical turnaround from Mao’s austere communist policies to a mercantile approach that spurred development for the impoverished giant. But Deng knew that such action, if handled poorly, could unnerve the world and curtail China’s development .

The arrest of several Chinese nationals running a de facto police station in New York last week is just the latest example that shows China is no longer feigning to follow this approach. The Dragon is no longer hiding its strength and biding its time. It is now throwing its weight around and flexing its muscles as one of the most powerful countries in the world.

The charges in New York are shocking. The station existed to intimidate members of the Chinese diaspora in the U.S. who were critical of the Chinese Communist Party. Intelligence officers based out of the station tried to convince their countrymen to return to China and threatened their families if they didn’t comply. Related charges also showcase broader efforts of such Chinese intimidation, such as the plan to pressure a China-based employee at Zoom to disrupt the commemoration of the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989. Other charges accuse 34 Chinese nationals of operating a “troll farm,” focused on spreading disinformation in the United States. Approximately 100 other similar stations around the world have started to attract attention.

China has historically practiced a more subtle form of intelligence-gathering and influence campaigns. It cultivated ties with think tanks and academics, setting up similar institutions in China meant to mirror these organizations but staffed by intelligence officers, to spread Chinese views and identify people it could cultivate.

China also leveraged its famous “thousand grains of sand” approach to intelligence, in which small pieces of information were painstakingly gathered to put together a broader picture. These intelligence methods worked because China has an incredible amount of manpower — some estimate there are 250,000 people working specifically on industrial espionage. China also has a massive global diaspora, and it leaned on members of this group to do favors for their ancestral homeland.

These subtle methods were China’s preferred form of subterfuge for decades because they mostly flew below the radar of authorities.

Things have changed in recent years. Several decades of double-digit economic growth, a ballooning military budget, and, in their view, an America in decline, have emboldened China. So-called “Wolf Warrior” diplomats have unnerved governments with strident, often belligerent nationalist statements asserting Chinese priorities. These diplomats have been applauded at home, lionized in Chinese popular culture as having stood up to foreign oppressors. Chinese intelligence collection has stepped out of the shadows and gotten more aggressive, from spy balloons to increases in brazen cyberattacks to police stations situated in foreign countries.

After Deng’s maxim came the notion of China’s “peaceful rise,” or the idea that China assuming its rightful place among the most powerful nations could happen with minimal disruption to the global order. This idea was actually a Chinese influence operation itself, credited largely to Zheng Bijian and the China Reform Forum, a Beijing-based think tank with deep ties to the Ministry of State Security, meant to assure the world that China’s intentions were peaceful and encourage assistance with its development.

But China’s recent actions show that the notion of a “peaceful rise” was always a ruse meant to placate the world until China was powerful enough to disregard concerns about its power. The indictments in New York and the broader policy pivot the U.S. government is undertaking toward China are important steps in standing up to the new bully on the block.

Jeremy Hurewitz is a policy adviser on national security at the Joseph Rainey Center , a strategic adviser to Interfor International , and the founder of Sell Like a Spy .