The term brainwashing was coined in 1950 by Edward Hunter, a CIA operative who wrote about a trend among American prisoners in the Korean War, who had been subjected to Chinese Communist thought reform and came out of prisoner camps praising Chairman Mao.29 The word itself is a rough translation of xi nao—the pinyin version of two Mandarin characters, which literally translate to “wash” and “brain”—a colloquial phrase for the formal thought-reform process exercised under the Mao government.
