The Chinese test was shocking because space was thought to be quite safe. That was an illusion. In the 1980s the Soviets conducted a few antisatellite tests and then stopped. U.S. experts thought that proved the Soviets had concluded that attacks on satellites were not in their interests, essentially because they thought the Soviets had accepted U.S. reasoning about the stabilizing effect of satellite reconnaissance. After the Cold War ended, however, the Russians published detailed accounts of their space activities. It turned out that the tests had ended because they had proved the system successful. The Soviet antisatellite system was deployed, and it stayed deployed throughout the Cold War, clearly without the United States being aware of it.

To the Soviets, antisatellite measures made perfect sense. U.S. reconnaissance satellites were and are extremely expensive, and they are made in very small numbers. If one is destroyed, instant replacement is not an option.

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Friedman, Norman. "War in Space?." U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings. Vol. 133, No. 3 (March 2007). [ 5 quotes ]