Abstract: Based on the fact that enterprises' transnational operations in the countries along the “Belt and Road” route have promoted the flow of goods, funds, technology, personnel and information among different cities which leads to the cities along the“Belt and Road”route being linked into a network, this paper makes use of the spatial distribute data of 5,534 different level institutions of 363 globally influential multinational companies in 142 cities along the Belt and Road route to measure the economic linkage strength of the cities along the“Belt and Road”route and the influence of the key domestic nodal cities from multiple dimensions by employing the complex network analysis method. The results show that in the urban network system along the“Belt and Road”route, the network connectivity of the cities along the“21st Century Maritime Silk Road”is stronger than that of the cities along the “Silk Road Economic Belt”, that such representative cities of China as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Hang Kong have higher network node status and linking strength, while the inland cities have relatively insufficient network linking strength, and that, in the key domestic nodal cities, the influence and the linking strength of urban networks built by multinational companies with advanced production services are relatively weaker and need to be improved.

Key words: Belt and Road, network connectivity, nodal city, influence