The influence of executives’ military experience on corporate behavior is a key topic in the field of strategic management in recent years. Under the background of vigorously advocating the “Belt and Road” initiative in China, this paper uses the frequency of the “Belt and Road” initiative in the annual reports of listed companies as an index to measure enterprises’ responsiveness to the “Belt and Road” initiative. Taking A-share listed companies from 2013 to 2017 as a sample, this paper empirically testes the relationship between executives’ military experience and the response degree of the “Belt and Road” initiative. The study finds that the military experience of executives is significantly positively correlated with enterprises’ responsiveness to the “Belt and Road” initiative, and the above results are still robust after using propensity score matching to overcome sample selection errors and endogenous problems. This is because executives with military experience have a strong sense of patriotism and responsibility, regardless of self-interest and integrity. Influenced by political ideas for a long time, they have strong policy perception and can better realize the significance of the “Belt and Road” initiative and the major strategic opportunities it brings to enterprises, so they are more likely to respond positively to the government’s call. After distinguishing the nature of property rights, the study finds that compared with state-owned enterprises, the positive relationship between non-state-owned enterprises is more significant. After classifying the degree of implicit corruption in enterprises, the empirical test shows that in enterprises with low implicit corruption, the positive relationship between the military experience of executives and the response degree of the “Belt and Road” initiative is more significant, and the implicit corruption of executives plays a moderating role. Further research shows that in listed companies located in key provinces along the “Belt and Road”, the military experience of executives is significantly positively correlated with the response degree of the “Belt and Road” initiative, while it is not significant in non-key provinces. In addition, compared with the key provinces along the “21st Century Maritime Silk Road”, the positive relationship between executives’ military experience and initiative responsiveness is more significant in the listed companies located in the key provinces along the “Silk Road Economic Belt”. Through the empirical test, this paper proves the influence of executives’ military experience on the policy response to the “Belt and Road” initiative, which enriches the relevant research on the characteristics of executives joining the army in theory, and provides practical enlightenment for the response to the “Belt and Road” initiative in practice.