How does the communication infrastructure quality of the countries along the “Belt and Road” effect the equipment export of China?

Under the influence of COVID-19 in the past few years, the world has been facing tremendous changes. The world economy is also facing strong headwinds on its path toward recovery, and global development has suffered major setbacks. Under this background, China's equipment export has also been greatly affected. In order to maintain a stable export of equipment manufacturing to the “Belt and Road” countries, this article constructs an extended gravity model with communication infrastructure variables using the statistical data of China's equipment manufacturing exports from 2010 to 2020 and discusses the impact of “Belt and Road” countries' communication infrastructure quality on China's equipment manufacturing exports by product and country heterogeneity analysis. The results indicate significant differences in the quality of communication infrastructure among countries along the “Belt and Road”. Overall, the improvement of “Belt and Road” countries' communication infrastructure quality can promote the export of China's equipment manufacturing industry. Except for the electrical machinery and office instrument, the quality improvement of “Belt and Road” countries' communication infrastructure has a positive effect on other subdivision products of China's equipment manufacturing industry, but the intensity of the effect is heterogeneous. The improvement of transition economies' communication infrastructure quality significantly promotes the export of China's equipment manufacturing industry, but the developed and developing economies' promotion effect is not significant.