I already know brainwashing is the CIA taking a scary sounding word that just means to think scientifically and making it a boogeyman (all the while the US Gov was imprisoning and dosing people with LSD for months on end to effectively brainwash them). I’m assuming what’s true for the gulag system was true for the Laogai, but some sources would be nice.
One of the big fearmongering attempts about China in the 90s, they tried to make “Laogai” into the new “Gulag” but it didn’t stick, so only the libbest of libs were still making reference to them.