Abstract:Over the past ten years, the "Belt and Road" has become a new highlight of China's foreign trade cooperation in the new era. Based on the theory of new economic geography, this paper takes 60 countries along the "Belt and Road" as the research samples, and utilizes the cross-country panel data from 2001 to 2019 to test the effect of factor endowment on the trade cooperation between China and the countries along the "Belt and Road" from the spatial perspective by applying the dynamic spatial panel stochastic frontier model, based on which it analyzes the characteristics of the changes in the efficiency of the trade cooperation between China and the countries along the "Belt and Road" and the potential for the cooperation in the trade of different types of commodities, and then combines the idea of the two-dimensional matrix to propose the path for the release of the potential of the trade cooperation in the future on the basis of the appropriateness of the factor endowment and the potential of the trade. The conclusions are as follows: This paper constructs a spatial connectivity matrix based on the connectivity index, and finds that there exists a double positive time-space dependence relationship between China's trade cooperation with countries along the "Belt and Road". Natural resource and capital factors play a significant role in promoting trade cooperation between China and the countries along the "Belt and Road", while there is a certain degree of "competition" in terms of the labor factor, and the trade-promoting effect of the innovation factor has not yet been given full play, and the trade-promoting effect of the innovation factor has not yet been fully realized. In terms of control variables, the size of the host country's economy, the degree of industrialization, the level of urbanization, the existence of a common border between the two countries, the signing of the agreement and the accession to the World Trade Organization are all conducive to the trade cooperation between China and the "Belt and Road" countries, geographic distance is still an important obstacle to bilateral trade cooperation, in addition to capital, bilateral trade cooperation is also subject to inefficiency factors, there is still a greater potential for expansion of China's trade cooperation with countries along the "Belt and Road", the above conclusions are still established after the trade distance matrix and the economic and geographic matrix of the robustness of the test. In terms of heterogeneity, it is further found that trade cooperation between China and countries along the "Belt and Road" is characterized by significant product heterogeneity. In terms of trade efficiency, the efficiency of trade cooperation between China and countries along the "Belt and Road" has continued to improve, but has not yet reached an "optimal state". In terms of trade potential hierarchy, the number of re-modeling trading partners is the smallest, and the number of growth trading partners is the most, and the structure of trade potential hierarchy of different categories of products is characterized by an unbalanced structure. Finally, combining the two-dimensional matrix idea, based on the suitability of factor endowment and trade potential, trade partners can be divided into four types of trade partners: intensive and efficient, efficiency-led, steadily improving and scale-expanding. Based on this, we propose three paths of unilateral breakthrough, progressive improvement and leapfrog in releasing trade potential, which can provide an important reference for the promotion of the "Belt and Road" to realize the "smooth flow of trade", and provide important references for the high-quality promotion of the construction of the "Belt and Road".