Which the US did in 1961...

The Chinese do silly things like blow up satellites (causing space debris), to show their might - things that the US had done 30 years ago.

Whereas, the US has systems that can track and predict all space debris of sizes greater than 1/2 inch.

It's just orders of magnitude more advanced.

One might note that a year after the Chinese anti-satellite missile test, the US did the same exact thing, also producing orbital debris: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Burnt_Frost

This suggests that no debris was created:

http://www.defensemedianetwork.com/stories/u-s-navy-missile-...

Plenty of debris was created, it was just in a low and decaying orbit so it was mostly gone in a few days. By contrast most of the debris from the Chinese test will still be there in 2030 unless someone goes out and cleans it up.

On the other hand the argument was about China's technical abilities and intercepting something in a higher orbit with a faster closing velocity is harder to do than the US's anti-satellite test. The Chinese proved they could destroy surveillance satellites and the US didn't really show that they could do the same.