Taiwan says China sent someone to spy on its vice president's speech in Italy, a sign of how hard Beijing works to shut Taiwan out of world events.

• Security staff found a woman sitting alone at the empty outdoor venue three hours before the speech, staring at her phone.
• She said she was a cleaner for the next event, but no cleaners were scheduled and the area was closed off.
• Guards photographed her, made a call, and told her to leave or come to the police station. She never came back.
• Hsiao Bi-khim spoke at a freedom and democracy forum on the Italian island of Ventotene, alongside a European Parliament vice president and a former Italian deputy foreign minister.
• The worry in Taipei: if China isolates Taiwan long enough, the world stops paying attention and starts treating the Taiwan Strait as China's internal affair.

Outlook: Taiwan will keep pushing its senior officials onto international stages, and China will keep trying to block them.