 Social democratic movements in Europe have been of great interest to the CPC since the early 1980s. With the exception of a short period in which the CPC forged party-to-party relations with far-right parties during the 1970s in an effort to halt "Soviet expansionism", the CPC's relations with European social democratic parties were its first serious efforts to establish cordial party-to-party relations with non-communist parties. The CPC credits the European social democrats with creating a "capitalism with a human face". Before the 1980s, the CPC had a highly negative and dismissive view of social democracy, a view dating back to the Second International and the Leninist and Stalinist view on the social democratic movement. By the 1980s that view had changed, and the CPC concluded that it could actually learn something from the social democratic movement. CPC delegates were sent all over Europe to observe. It should be noted that by the 1980s most European social democratic parties were facing electoral decline, and were in a period of self-reform. The CPC followed this with great interest, laying most weight on reform efforts within the British Labour Party and the Social Democratic Party of Germany. The CPC concluded that both parties were re-elected because they modernized, replacing traditional state socialist tenets with new ones supporting privatization, shedding the belief in big government, conceiving a new view of the welfare state, changing negative views of the market, and moving from their traditional support base of trade unions to entrepreneurs, younger members and students.
