Based on unbalanced panel enterprise data, this paper empirically analyzes the direct investment of 3981 Chinese enterprises in 45 countries The Belt and Road from 2007 to 2018. The empirical results show that Chinese enterprises’OFDI is a market expansion behavior driven by profitability on the basis of sustainable environmental development in countries along the the Belt and Road. In terms of the research on the difference of intrinsic attributes of enterprises, the OFDI of state-owned enterprises and science and technology enterprises mainly focuses on expanding market scale, while the OFDI of private enterprises and non-science and technology enterprises is mainly affected by business efficiency and market scale. The main intrinsic driver of labor-intensive and polluting OFDI is the decline in profitability. In terms of the research on the difference of economic factor endowments, the impact of corporate profitability on OFDI changes from negative to positive when the region with efficiency endowment is taken as the boundary. In terms of the study on the differences of commercial transport channels and modernization, commercial enterprises prefer to direct investment in the“the Road”region, while capacity transfer enterprises prefer to direct investment in the“the Belt”region. There is a need for enterprises to realize the reverse flow of technology through OFDI. China should accelerate the cultivation of enterprises’profitability in the local market and practice high-quality joint development of the countries along the Belt and Road.