
To promote the development of Chinese kanpai, and carry our cultural exchanges with the Japanese haiku poets, the Kanpai Society, a non-governmental organization that is specially engaged in kanpai research and creation, was founded in Beijing on March 23, 2005. The leadership of the Society includes: Lin Lin who serves as honorary president, Chen Haosu adviser, Liu Deyou president, Yuan Ying, Lin Xiu, Tu An and Ji Peng vice presidents, Xu Jinping secretary general and Dong Zhenghua deputy secretary general.

Kanpai is a form of poetry born in the cultural exchanges between the Chinese poets and the Japanese haiku poets. In 1980 Mr. Zhao Puchu initiated the creation of kanpai. Since then this new form of poem has been added to the Chinese poetry. A kanpai is composed of 17 Chinese characters in three lines: five, seven and five characters in each. In the past 25 years, the creation and publication of kanpai have had a great development. The exchanges between the Japanese haiku poems and Chinese poems can be traced back to the Qing Dynasty. The Japanese haiku poets have been greatly influenced by traditional Chinese culture. At the inaugural meeting, Liu Deyou, president of the Kanpai Society and former vice cultural minister, said, the Kanpai Society will encourage its members to create kanpai, actively organize and promote kanpai academic activities and further strengthen the cultural and academic exchanges between China and Japan.
After the meeting, dozens of Japanese haiku poets and their Chinese counterparts had an exchange in Japanese and Chinese poems.