打狗看主人
dǎ​gǒu​kàn​zhǔ​rén

to refrain from bullying someone out of fear of their connections

打狗看主人 dǎ​gǒu​kàn​zhǔ​rén
to refrain from bullying someone out of fear of their connections
Literally "to look at the master before hitting the dog"; to take into account someone's powerful connections or the face of their superior before acting against them.

Frequency
Written text
0.009 per million

Sources
Frequency data
BCC Corpus (BLCU)