With the promotion of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and the development of trade between China and countries along the BRI, cultural distance, in addition to geographical and institutional distance, has become an important variable affecting bilateral trade relations. The social network of the Confucius Institute and the overseas Chinese network can moderate the cultural distance between the two countries to a certain extent and reduce the inhibiting effect of cultural distance on bilateral trade. An empirical model with cultural distance as the core explanatory variable and social network as the moderating variable is constructed to explore the impact of cultural distance on bilateral trade under the moderation of social network based on the trade data between China and 52 countries along the Belt and Road from 2008 to 2018. The results show that cultural distance has negative effects on bilateral trade, and social network has a good moderating effect on cultural distance. On this basis, some suggestions for trade policy adjustment between China and countries along the Belt and Road are put forward.