There are quite a few reasons. China needs a way out to open seas. The most direct path is by owning Taiwan, a relatively larger island that already has defenses built, which existing shipping infrastructure and pockets of high development. It can't go through the north (though maybe if Russia were desperate...) it can't go through the south, and the east is basically blocked in by unfriendly states. The Chinese people feel it is a historic and important territory for reunification. It's a similar situation to the two Koreas, there are people who wish for their country to be whole again. This sentiment is used by the CCP to justify their increasingly aggressive stance on Taiwan. Taiwan currently exports a main contributor to the western hegemony (Advanced computer chips), and so a capture/reunification of/with Taiwan would severely weaken western dominance regardless of if they can actually make those chips after the fact. Here, chips are the gravy, the meat is controlling or denying western computer chips. This is because China can already get Taiwanese scientists since people move between the two countries for work anyways. China does not like Japan, both for their alliance with the west, and for their ww2 activities. A Chinese owned Taiwan would put direct pressure on Japan that is more effective than North Korea. North Korea is a vassal state that pretends it wants to shoot a missile every few months to get money. Taiwan is a economically prosperous region that also has counter-claims on some islands that japan claims (that conveniently China also claims). This would strengthen Chinese claims on this island. (This is the Daioyu/Senkaku island dispute). More sea area means more fishing and natural resources rights. China is currently not energy independent or food secure, and these directly play into self-sufficiency. China believes itself to be the successor state of the ROC (and so also the Qing Dynasty) and so it believes that it inherits the claim on Taiwan, forming a legitimate historical claim to the island. More on reddit.com

It’s like in StarCraft 2 you spent a ton of resources on upgrades, why would you attack before your upgrades finish. But your opponent knows your upgrades are on the way, so they try their hardest to bait you to attack. But you know your opponent is baiting you, so there’s this mind game here. More on reddit.com

The CCP government justifies the Taiwan thing completely from a historical perspective. They see it as a part of unfinished civil war. Taiwan became part of the Qing empire in the 17th century. It was ceded to Japan in 1895, and given back to China in 1945 after China won WWII. In 1945-1949, a bloody civil war happened in China where the communist party (CCP) won almost the whole China from KMT (currently the opposition party in Taiwan). The KMT government retreated to Taiwan, and the CCP armed forces have no navies, so they aren't capable of sailing the strait to pursue and attack the KMT forces, and bring Chiang Kai-Shek to trial. In several following decades, the KMT in Taiwan is an authoritarian government hoping to reclaim the entire China by force with the help of the Americans, which launched air strikes in Shanghai in 1949-1953 and sent naval attack to coastal areas near Guangzhou in 1962-1963. The democratisation of Taiwan happened around 1990s, which is finally the Taiwan you see today. The CCP never recognised Taiwan as a country, but views it as an another power within one country instead. For their cooperations in economy and trade since the 1980s, they compare them to the cooperation between CCP and KMT in 1937-1945 against Japan. This historical dilemma can also be seen from the current Taiwan constitution which regulates the official name of the country as 'Republic of China', exactly the same name as the administration in China in 1912-1949. Edit: Source? Last Air strike in shanghai seems to have been 1950. And can't find anything about paratroopers drops in 1964. The Guangzhou bay attack was by sea in 1962-1963 and can be confirmed by records from both sides. The largest Shanghai air strike happened at Feb 6, 1950. Wikipedia says the strikes end in 1953. Many sources from the CCP reported strikes in 1949-1957 as anti-air results, but i found no records by the Taiwan side. More on reddit.com

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