Abstract: Overseas economic and trade cooperation zone is not only a critical undertaking point of jointly building the“Belt and Road Initiative”(BRI), but also an important platform to promote Chinese enterprises to “go global”with high quality. How to evaluate the construction of cooperation zones is of great significance of reference to the study of the effect of China’s BRI and the practical effect of the zones. Based on the sample data of 60 countries along the“Belt and Road”, this paper empirically analyzes the influence of overseas economic and trade cooperation zones on the economic growth of the host countries and its internal mechanism by using the progressive difference in differences method, and analyzes the heterogeneity of the economic characteristics of the host countries and the types of cooperation zones. The results show that, firstly, the establishment of
overseas economic and trade cooperation zones can significantly promote the economic growth of host countries.
Among them, the inflow of foreign investment and the scale of trade play an intermediary role to some extent.
Secondly, overseas economic and trade cooperation zones have heterogeneity in promoting the economic growth
of the host countries, and have stronger economic boosting effect on countries with a lower income level and poor
business system.

Key words: “the Belt and Road”, overseas economic and trade cooperation zones, economic growth;
difference in differences