The recent (April 2021) Chinese CZ-5B rocket launch gained widespread media attention because the large launcher was designed to de-orbit in an uncontrolled fashion, and ultimately landed in the Indian Ocean. This is the second such launch: in 2020, one crash-landed in West Africa. There has been some criticism of the apparent recklessness of this approach.
I asked a question on Law (https://law.stackexchange.com/q/64802/31473) regarding the legal consequences around (hypothetical) personal or property damage caused by re-entering debris from this launch. One aspect I drew attention to was the apparent reckless nature of it (which often has an impact on a legal claim) - this is not re-entering debris from the early days, or a result of a fault. The post initially received criticism (now deleted) for singling out the Chinese, where the US might be considered at least as much a target (and SpaceX was mentioned). After all, most space junk is of US or Russian origin. Skylab was edited into the question for balance.
Which leads to the question: has the CZ-5B launch been unfairly singled out for criticism, or is this approach to debris management indeed more widespread? And is it reasonable to consider rapidly re-entering launch debris as a distinct case from space junk generally?