As negotiations to end Sudan's decades-long North-South civil war progressed closer to a final peace agreement in 2004, a UN Human Rights Coordinator for Sudan cautioned that a region called Darfur in the west of the country now posed ‘the world's greatest humanitarian crisis’. Since 2003, the government of Sudan had been waging war against rebel groups in Darfur. Over the summer of 2004, a group of concerned organisations and individuals in the United States formed the Save Darfur Coalition (SDC) to highlight humanitarian concerns and advocate conflict resolution. Expanding the scope of its advocacy campaigns, the SDC sought additional targets beyond the US national arena in order to generate leverage over the government of Sudan. From 2004 to 2008, the SDC highlighted and targeted crucial linkages in the international arena, while staying rooted domestically in the US. Activists identified China as a vulnerable target because it was an ally of the Sudanese government, its status was increasing in the international community, and it was hosting the Olympic Games in 2008.

During the Beijing Summer Olympics of 2008, China welcomed over 200 countries for the quadrennial ritual of competition, fellowship and sportsmanship. China's hosting of the Olympics intensified media attention around its human rights policies. When actors such as the US and the United Nations failed to compel the other members of the international community to respond to the situation in Darfur, SDC advocates in the US began a unique campaign to target China, which I shall refer to as the ‘China Campaign’.