Why one could not electronically disable a satellite and keep it in one piece is beyond me. Use a localized EMP and keep the space debris to a minimum.
The chinese on the other hand don’t care about anyone but themselves.
Physics my dear friend, physics. Detonating anything in orbit (even an EMP) involves creating debris, end of story. The problem is that everything in orbit is traveling AT LEAST 17000mph. If two objects are on divergent courses, that means relative velocities get really high really fast. When you create an explosion in space, it doesn’t tend to want to fall like it does on Earth, it wants to send debris in every direction. In order to detonate your EMP, you have to not only intersect your target’s orbit, but you have to pull up right next to it, and then detonate. And even if your EMP doesn’t disable it (remember, these satellites are hardened to survive EM radiation from the sun and every other object out there) the particles from the detonation of your EMP will.
It’s about a million times easier to just go and blow it up, but that creates a debris hazard. If we keep blowing things up in orbit, we’ll never get off this rock because we will have (to steal a line from the Matrix) “scorched the sky.”