In 50 years I hope we are doing 50 space launches a day. At that volume, every single debris item is risk and headache. 10 years later and we've got a full 2,000 golf balls left in orbit? That's a lot. There have actually been casualties to blowing up the FY-1C? That's also significant.
These things get worse as we put more in space. If each explosion takes out on average 1 victim satellite per 5,000 satellites, and generates 1/100th the debris of the original explosion, we've got a cascade at just 500,000 total objects in orbit.
That may seem like a lot compared to the 5,000 we have today, but already we are discovering materials and technologies that are useful which can only be manufactured in free-fall. If orbital manufacturing ever takes off, 500,000 objects in orbit will be nothing.