| Foreign trade policy is an important instrument for nations to stimulate economic growth and it is also an important measure for developing countries to catch up with developed countries. Nations of different scales and different development stages require a dissimilar type of foreign trade policy. A right option is conductive to a nation's economic development and catching-up, whereas a wrong way will bereave a nation of its development opportunities. Therefore, the choice of a suitable foreign trade policy is of theoretical and practical importance in the academic field.India is an emerging superpower. It is proved that foreign trade policies chosen by large nations have specific features which are different from those of small nations, and that foreign trade policy evolution of large nations follows a special law. India can be used in a case study to research large nations'option of foreign trade policies in different economic stages and the evolution mechanim behind them, which is academically valuable and practically meaningful to validate and enrich theories of foreign trade policy and economic research of large nations.The first, second and third acceleration of Indian economic growth in the 1980s, 1990s and the first ten years in the 21st century respectively are all related to a series of institutional evolutions, economic transitions and policy innovations, especially the radical reform toward liberalization, privatization, marketization and globalization in 1991. Economic reforms vitalized India's foreign trade, which in turn contributed to its economic growth. As a result, a benign interaction took place among economic reforms, foreign trade and economic growth.The Indian foreign trade policy evolution goes all the way with and constitutes an important part of its economic reform leading by institution transformation. Foreign trade policies of any nation are formulated and adjusted on the basis of their respective national economic conditions and the general global context, and cannot be parted with socially individualistic factors resulting from a nation's history or culture. India is a superpower with long history of civilized culture. Its internal conditions are complex and its external environment is volatile. Therefore the evolution of its foreign trade policy and the mechanism behind it are also very complicated. Then, how did India's foreign trade policy evolve over time? Why did it evolve along this path? What was the root cause? Is there a specific or common rule to follow in the option and evolution of foreign trade polices of large nations? What are those special and individualistic factors? What roles do they play? How about the social and economic performance of the foreign trade policies chosen and implemented by India? Can they be regarded as a new model for breaking through traditional theories and providing references for other large nations?The aim of this dissertation is to answer these questions. By conducting a historical and logic inspection over India's foreign trade policy practice, this dissertation tries to identify the historical and logic junction of its evolution and analyze the internal causes and external restricts of it, so that it familiarizes us with the major economic, political, social and cultural aspects of India and helps us make a right judgment toward India's emergence and enrich economic theory and research targeted for large nations. India and China have developed a rapid growth in their bilateral trade in recent years. Understanding the evolution mechanism and mastering the dynamic state of the foreign trade policy of India are helpful to make an accurate judgment for the future trend of the trade relations between these two countries. An old Chinese saying goes "that stones from other mountains could besiege jade". Being adjacent to each other, China and India are both large Asian nation with similar historical sufferings. The special considerations India takes into based on its condition as a large nation when formulating and adjusting its foreign trade poliy, and the Indian way of opening-up could illustrate lessons and give inspiration to China which is in the course of adjusting and transforming its way of economic development including foreign economic relations.The methodologies used in this dissertation are as follows. First, a combination of historical and logic methods are employed. Logic thinking should be based on historical analysis. Historical descriptions should be accorded to logic relations. No science can use only one of the two methods. Therefore, historical methods are used in the first place to completely replay India's foreign trade policies along their natural development as the foundation of logic analysis. In the second place, logic methods in the form of concepts, categories and theories are used to analyze and explain the inevitability of India's option in its foreign trade polies, and then summarize and abstract the law of their development. The unity of history and logic is pursued. Second, a combination of economic theories and political economic theories are used. It is out of question that research of foreign trade policies requires economic theories as rationales and guidance. Nevertheless, the political economic analysis of interests in the course of foreign trade policy formulation and the political process behind trade policy development (that is, the political economics of trade policy analysis) cannot be neglected. In order to explore and study those determining and modifying factors behind India's option for its foreign trade policy, it is imperative to combine the relative economic theories and political theories. The absence of any one would result in a one-sided analysis.This dissertation is divided into seven chapters. Chapter 1 is an introduction, in which the background, purpose and significance of the research are expounded, then the literature of related topics is reviewed, and finally the research content, framework and methodology of this dissertation are put forward. Chapter 2 outlines the evolution path of India's foreign trade poliy from the perspective of its history, replaying its transformation from "import substitution" to "cautious liberalization", therefore laying a foundation for the deep analysis in the following chapters. Chapter 3 analyzes the decisive role India's condition as a superpower played in its option of foreign trade poliy. Since large nations and small nations in their different development stages follow different laws when choosing their foreign trade policy, this chapter tries to expound the rationalities in India's "import substitution" and later its "cautious liberalization" trade policy and the root cause which pushed the transformation. Chapter 4 analyzes the significant effect of the global political and economic environment on the evolution of India's foreign trade policy. This includes the dominant economic theories, the cold war system, the SSRC model, China factor and the multilateral trading system and regional economic integration in the era of globalization which exert the most profound influence on the foreign trade policies in different economies. Chapter 5 analyzes the effect of India's social, political and cultural structures on the option and evolution of its foreign trade polies. Interest groups, party politics and traditional culture are chosen as the three non-economic factors to explore the complex institutional environment in which India's foreign trade policy evolved. Chapter 6 assesses the performance of India's foreign trade policy. Chapter 7 draws seven conclusions with a summary.Through investigation and analysis, it is outlined that the evolution path of India's foreign trade policy is a transformation from semi-controlled and semi-closed inward "import substitution" to market-oriented and open "trade liberalization" with an Indian-characteristic "cautious" style. The reasons why India's foreign trade policy evolved in this direction and with such a feature can be summarized as follows:Firrstly, the contradictory movement of large nations'economic development constitutes the internal "motivation" which plays a decisive role, acting as the root cause; Secondly, the change of global environment constitutes the external "pressures" which play a pushing role, providing a series of feasible condition for the implementation of the trade policy; Thirdly, India's domestic political, social and cultural structures as non-economic factors constitute institutional "restrains" which play a restrictive role, influencing the reactive speed and the style of its policy. The evolution of India foreign trade policy and the change of direction are in conformity with its national condition and the law of large nations'foreign trade policies evolution, therefore demonstrating their inevitability.Some law-like rules in the course of the economic development of large nations reflected from the evolution of India's foreign trade policy have many references for China who shares a lot of similarities with India. In the future economic development of large nations such as China and India, the essentials are whether strategies suitable for large nations could be formulated, whether their advantages could be developed and their disadvantages could be avoided in the progress of economic globalization and whether their traditional institutions could be adjusted and reformed to meet the requirements for modernization in time.The innovative points of this dissertation are as follows. Firstly, the research perspective is innovative. Previous studies focus mainly on the economic development and economic reform of India. The existing documents which explore the laws of the Indian economic development from the perspective of India's foreign trade policy and its evolution mechanism are scarce. Therefore this dissertation tries to widen and deepen the existing research in this respect. Furthermore, when analyzing India's foreign trade policy option and evolution mechanism, this dissertation identifies India's superpower condition as the breakthrough point and the focus, elaborating the decisive role played by nation scale. Such a perspective has not been found in existing research. Secondly, the viewpoint is innovative. This dissertation further proves and enriches the empirical conclusions of the different attributes and laws in the process of choosing foreign trade policy between large nations and small ones, and puts forward that the contradictory movement of large nations'economic development constitutes the internal "motivation" which plays a decisive role, acting as the root cause, that the change of global environment constitutes the external "pressures" which play a pushing role, providing a series of feasible conditions for the implementation of trade policies, and that India's domestic political, social and cultural structures as non-economic factors constitute institutional "restrains" which play a restrictive role, influencing the reactive speed and the style of its policy. Thirdly, the research area is innovative. The research of the formulation and evolution mechanism of India's foreign trade policy does not confine us to economic factors. An exploration on the non-economic factors adds uniqueness and originality for this dissertation. The comprehensive analysis of historical, political, religion and cultural factors could reveal the social and institutional environment hiding behind India's foreign trade policy.The limitations of this dissertation are as follows. Firstly, the research of India's foreign trade policy often involves performance analysis. However, a pure study on the economic performance of foreign trade policies is relatively difficult because the function process of trade and other policies are intertwining and/or interactive, that is, the policy variables are highly related, and that the economic performance of institutional factors are difficult to quantify. At the same time, the author herself is not good at quantitative analysis. Therefore, this dissertation is lacking in economic performance of trade policies. Secondly, "many issues in the field of international trade can be far from being solved on the strength of only one subject, such as economics, law or politics. Therefore, a cooperation of multiple disciplines is necessary." This is true of this foreign trade policy study. The ultimate foreign trade policy chosen by India is not completely out of economic consideration, but is heavily influenced by political, diplomatic factors. Furthermore, India is a multi-ethnic, multi-caste and multi-religion nation with a long history and deep culture, all of which have an imperceptible influence on its foreign trade policy. Not a single subject could reveal the essence of them in an accurate or comprehensive way. Therefore, a penetrating analysis of the evolution of India's foreign trade policy and the mechanism behind them need not only profound economic knowledge but also a good command of international politics, diplomacy, history and culture. These make the writing of this dissertation somewhat difficult, the analysis imperfect and incomprehensive somewhere, which drives me to read extensively so as to be well versed in a variety of subjects necessary for a better research on foreign trade policies in the future.
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