The analysis of the impact of the Belt and Road initiative on the green development of participating countries

China has emphasized the importance of implementing the concept of green development into the process of the Belt and Road initiative. Therefore, in the process of promoting the initiative, it is necessary to clarify its impact on the green development of the participating countries. Based on such consideration, this paper establishes Green Development Capability (GDC) index tomeasure the green development level, and uses the Spatial DurbinModel for empirical testing basing on relevant data on different cooperative patterns between China and participating countries. The results show: (i) Economic Development Cooperation, Environmental Governance Cooperation and Sustainable Cooperation are conducive to enhancing the GDC, while the cooperation of Resource Utilization based on fossil energy trading has adversely affected on GDC. (ii) The current cooperation approaches have spillover effects, but not yet broken the Spatial Club imbalance. (iii) Economic Development Cooperation, Environmental Governance Cooperation and Sustainable Cooperation contribute to the promotion of developing countries' GDC, but over-reliance on mineral exploitation has caused these countries to fall into Resource Curses and hinder them from playing Backward Advantage. (C) 2020 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.