[John H K]

A dirty little secret of World War II is that large-scale airdrops generally weren't effective and entailed massive casualties, and all countries have pretty much abandoned the idea of paradroping divisional-sized units. However, "paratroops" developed a lot of elan and cachet, so we still have "paratroops" that don't actually paratroop into combat (the brigade drop in Iraq was a farcical show, not a combat drop.)

I can only imagine the hilarious (and bloody) failure of a wildly inexperienced military like mainland China attempting paradrops over a place that they likely can't achieve air superiority over, such as Taiwan.

[GOP_1900AD]

The role of any airborne troops in a Taiwan conquest would likely be quite limited. The WW-II analogy is not correct. How confident are you in your assessment regarding air superiority? And why do you assume that the PLAAF would be the only force in play from the attacking side?