"The entire Falklands campaign was one Exocet away from being an utter catastrophe"
Not entirely.
Unlike the Harpoon AFAIK the Exocet could not execute a ballistic attack and I think most ASM's move slowly enough to be hit by point defense guns. Although it would be an excellent application for the "metal storm" barrelless concept. AFAIK it's blowing out the whole keel (due to the massive KE) that would kill a carrier.
The DF21 does indeed sound threatening but we'll see if it delivers.
It comes down to this. It's been known since the 60's that runways for M2 jets (which everyone seems to have been obsessed with back them) made for large vulnerable targets and everyone had everybody else's map coordinates dialed into either their (nuclear) missiles or their aircraft cluster bomb dispenser.
Only the Harrier bucked this trend. A triumph of French conceptual design, US funding of the NATO R&D operation and Hawkers insistence it was a good idea. Yes the engine concept set limits on aircraft size and maintenance was a nightmare but it could have gone bigger and the latter could have been engineered out.
Everyone else said "No we'll just build a floating runway and then we can just buy land aircraft and have a few mods. Just a few % more expensive and we'll have so much more choice."
Only they aren't "just a few % more expensive" they are a lot more expensive. IIRC Naval JSF''s are 2x as expensive as their land based version (IIRC a GAO report says the 3 core versions are now about 25% the same. IOW they are basically 3 separate aircraft, with supply chains to match and dis-economies of scale).
But so far AFAIK all the carrier operators have been cruise missile operators and it seems no one wants to be the first to use the latter to demolish the advantages of having the former.
But what happens when you face a technological opponent who does not have carriers and won't "play the game" ? Who sees sinking you carrier as a complete win for them?
The Netherlands is an advanced country with a strong naval tradition and no aircraft carriers. From their PoV sending a multi $Bn investment to the bottom would not be a problem for them as they don't have any.