Abstract: This paper integrates the factors of both home country and host country into an analytical framework and uses the Poisson Pseudo-maximum Likelihood estimation to comprehensively examine the influence of multidimensional distance on the export and foreign direct investment based on the panel data of 45 countries along the "Belt and Road" from 2003 to 2018. The results show that the improvement of the host country's technical level and economic freedom is conducive to the expansion of China's export and foreign direct investment to the countries along the "Belt and Road". Institutional distance, economic and cultural distance hinder China's export and foreign direct investment and have stronger inhibition on foreign direct investment. The revised geographical distance promotes foreign direct investment of Chinese enterprises and helps export. Therefore, Chinese enterprises should not only pay attention to the technical level and economic freedom of the host country, but should also actively take into consideration the multi-dimensional distance to weaken the inhibitory effect of multi-dimensional distance on export and foreign direct investment continuously.

Key words: the "Belt and Road", institutional distance, cultural distance, foreign direct investment, economic and trade cooperationt