As Peter Li – Humane Society International’s China policy specialst – prepares for another season of blood-letting, he is optimistic Yulin’s horrific animal slaughter will one day fade into history.

Yulin has become a byword for cruelty with scenes of dogs being crammed into cages, bludgeoned, blow-torched and butchered on the streets.

Although it reflects globally in an adverse way on China, only around 20 per cent of the population eat dogs, yet this still accounts for millions of animals killed each year, many stolen pets.

With so much focus on Yulin, the number of animals being killed during the week-long festival has been plummeting, with numbers down from 10,000 to fewer than 3,000 over the past few years.

It is the rescue missions and protests staged by HSI and their Chinese colleagues which is playing a pivotal role in the process of confining the Yulin festival to the history books.

As HSI this week launched its 2018 Yulin petition with calls for the authorities to take tougher action, Dr Li, an associate professor of East Asian politics at University of Houston-Downtown, explained what has driven him to campaign against the festival since its inception almost a decade ago.