With a sample of Chinese listed companies from 2009 to 2018, we adopt an event study approach to proxy the short-term capital market response of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Subsequently, a general difference-in-differences framework is employed to explore the long-term impact of the initiative on corporate performance and market entry with BRI as a quasi-natural experimental. Our findings are as followed: 1) The cumulative abnormal returns induced by the BRI are positive, but the proportion of enterprises with negative abnormal returns slightly exceeds those with positive returns; 2) The BRI significantly promotes the expansion of investment, the growth of scale, the increase in returns, and the enhancement of market entry. And we find financing constraints as the main mechanism of the above findings; 3) We further provide some heterogeneities according to firm features, regional institutional environments, and industry characteristics. This study provides empirical evidences for the construction of the BRI, the development of economic globalization, and how to build a new development pattern under the current background of trade protectionism.