Abstract: Trade and investment facilitation is a priority area for the construction of the Silk Road Economic Belt, and it is also a hot issue in the field of global trade and economic affairs. This paper constructs a set of trade and investment facilitation index system to measure the level of facilitation by using the principal component analysis method, reveals the space-time characteristics of trade and investment facilitation of 32 countries along the Silk Road Economic Belt. In time, 2009—2018, the level of trade and investment facilitation in countries along the route has been improved to varying degrees. In space, it shows the spatial features of "Europe is the highest, West Asia is higher, East Asia, Central Asia and Africa are lower, and South Asia is the lowest''. At the same time, it finds that factors such as the facilitation foundation, domestic and foreign political environment, economic development level and foreign policy of countries along the belt and Road are the important reasons for the temporal and spatial differences in facilitation levels among countries. Therefore, when carrying out economic and trade cooperation, countries along the Silk Road Economic Belt should take into account regional differences, accelerate the construction of free trade zones, promote the improvement of infrastructure and business environment, strengthen policy communication, enhance political mutual trust, and provide security guarantee for bilateral and multilateral economic and trade cooperation.

Key words: the ''Belt and Road'' Initiative, Countries along the Silk Road Economic Belt, International Economic and Trade Cooperation, Trade and Investment Facilitation, Time-and-space Analysis, Principal Component Analysis