Abstract: Based on the in-depth implementation of China's “the Belt and Road” initiative and in the context of the solid promotion of enterprises' “going global” strategy, this paper constructs a theoretical model of the relationship between trade cost, OFDI and export trade to discuss the influence mechanism of trade cost and OFDI on export trade, on this basis, it further puts forward the research hypothesis and conducts an empirical test. The results show that, on the whole, China's OFDI and export trade with the countries along the “the Belt and Road” route have a positive complementary effect, and the trade cost will significantly inhibit China's export to the countries along the route. At the same time, both OFDI and trade cost show the characteristics of “preference for commodity attributes”, that is, with the increase of commodity value, the influence of the two on export will increase. The findings of further analysis indicate that China's OFDI has a complementary effect with the export of primary, labor-intensive and capital-intensive products. The export inhibition effect of trade cost on primary and labor-intensive products is relatively higher, and the export creation effect of the OFDI of these two types of products will be significantly inhibited. China's OFDI and export have a complementary effect on the countries with lower middle and upper middle incomes, while in the countries with higher incomes, a substitution effect is found but not significant. The impact of trade costs on exports varies according to national income, and the trade cost can merely significantly restrain the export creation effect of OFDI in middle and low-income countries.

Key words: asymmetric trade cost, OFDI, export trade, the Belt and Road