Claes Bourghardt

Co-founder & Executive Chairman

Claes Bourghardt is one of the top foreign businessmen in China and his family has a history in China reaching back to 1939. Claes lived in Shanghai 1992-1995 and acted as Honorary Consul to Sweden.

He is a co-founder and Executive Director of China Internet Ventures. He is an industrialist and successful entrepreneur who has devoted a great deal of time and resources to China and started as many as six different businesses there. Claes has personally been active in China since 1984 as a senior partner of Chinese Consulting AB, a European consultancy company that he left in 1997. The company helped Multinational Companies such as ABB, Alfa Laval, Astra-Zeneca, Braathens, Electrolux, Ericsson, IKEA, Kimberly-Clarke, Sandoz, SAS, and Tetra Pak to enter China.

In 2006, Claes was the only entrepreneur to be invited to join an official delegation to China headed by the King and Queen of Sweden, meeting, among many other dignitaries, the Chinese President Mr Hu Jintao. This was his eighth official visit to China . Claes shares his time between China and Europe since many years. Together with his partner Mr Zhu Hong, he has personally funded a primary school for 250 children in the Anhui province, the birth place of President Hu Jintao).