Old hands in some foreign places will remember that there are fixers and minders. Fixers are hired by e.g. corporations and news organizations and by embassies to help executives, reporters and senior officials (I was never senior enough ~ I think it was limited to Assistant Deputy Ministers, sometimes directors-general if they were heads of delegation) in strange places. Fixers were interpreters, guides and general helpers, sometimes even bodyguards. Minders did everything fixers did, usually (in my limited experience) better, but they were official; mine was assigned by the Chinese Ministry of Defence and I had no choice about her ~ thankfully she was pleasant and efficient. My minder had a seemingly magical ID card; she was able to move us to the front of almost every line and upgrade air and rail tickets (all at no charge), something that fixers could not do. Of course, she had other duties which included ensuring that I did NOT see or hear what I was not supposed to see or hear. It was just part of dealing with official China.
Ted Campbell, “A new front in Cold War 2.0”, Ted Campbell’s Point of View, 2020-06-26.
