"Well sure. I hope they don't use it. But increasing g aggression, ramming ships from other countries, and building an invasion fleet are not indicative of a country that has been given pause by our actions, as you claim."
The Soviets used to pull that crap as well, primarily against US ships, but also Norwegian, Swedish, and others.
They had also built an amphibious fleet that could have supported invasions (not as large, the Soviets didn't have nearly the open sea access that China has). I remember clearly such incidents leading to predictions of imminent conflict... which didn't happen.
Chinese actions definitely bear watching and strong response, but my read is, again, that their overt actions are more probing just to see how far that they can go, how big a bully they can seem to be, but they know that there's an equally capable counter to their bullying. The US response to the Ukraine invasion has, as I noted below, given them a lot to think about.
I fully believe that they did not expect a US/NATO response of the kind that was levied against Russia. No one had done diddly when Russia annexed Crimea, literally nothing other than half-hearted League of Nations kinds of protests, and I'm thinking that the Chinese expected the same international response this time.