I am well aware of both the compounds. First was a ammonium chloride based complex and second was a a cobalt based metal complex. There were two papers one from 2016 or early 2017 IIRC and another was from February or March 2017. I am well aware of both of them. However neither of these compound are what Chinese military enthusiasts and OP of this thread is making them to be. I.E. a compound 10-100x more powerful than TNT ( in terms of energy released). There is a very very fundamental reason behind it. As I mentioned there is already an established research on what can be theoretical highest possible energy dense substance (in terms of conventional chemical energy). There is further damning proof,
Look at the list of all the known High Explosives :-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TNT_equivalent#RE_factor_examples
The highest we have till now 2.38 TNT Equivalent by weight. ie. Octanitrocobane. Noteworthy point while a lot of high explosive are in a range of 1.5-2.38 TNT Eq. NONE is beyond that.
The only way to go beyond this limit -- till now -- is by cheating a bit. i.e. pulling some reactant from outside the bomb. In other words something like a Fuel Air Bomb which uses atmospheric oxygen there by increasing TNT Eq. Russian FOAB, for example has TNT Eq. greater than 4.5 . But then FOAB 'explosive' / Fuel would be impossible to use as a propellant without carrying a large amount of oxygen as well. This is why a gun will work in space but FOAB will NOT.
Now coming to the point of intent of these papers. The intent IMHO is academic in nature ie. to publish a valid and important research done by Chinese scientists. Most probably, they will use this in the future to prepare a high explosive for various uses and propellant for rockets etc. Also, possibly they will patent it, using these publications to show their noval work / innovation.
Also, If indeed this explosive were 10x TNT, as a researcher it would make sense to me to do two things :-
1. Either publish it and highlight this fact 10x RE TNT as it would have been the biggest achievement. It will challenge the theoretical model used to predict maximum possible explosive power -- opening door for further research and more impact.
2. Or, if it is too important, then do not publish at all and keep it a secret research. Like silk was once a Chinese secret for very very long time.
Publish partial results makes no sense. As in the future when your adversaries realize, they will have enough information in those papers to reconstruct your experiments. Those papers btw, are detailed enough for someone to verify their research by re-doing it.
All in all I think, this research, possibly will
in the future progress to a new high explosive, a very very important discovery -- if it happens -- because high explosive are worth their weight in more than gold. This one
may a good yield comparable or even higher than likes of CL-20 but its going to be no where in the range of 10x TNT. Still it will be important to have an indigenous high explosive with a completely home developed manufacturing process.