Its no coincidence this is in the news and im seriously doubting China wants this capability just for shooting space junk out of the sky. The thing about ground based lasers is they are pretty useless as weapons until you launch a relay mirror satellite and then your ground based laser that is not size-limited like a space-based laser becomes very deadly.
"China wants to clean Earth’s orbit by blasting space junk with giant lasers"
truepundit.com/china-wants-clean-earths-orbit-blasting-space-junk-giant-lasers/