Nebraska Newspaper

Date:2010/4/1 8:23:48 Clicks:3598 【Font Size:Big Normal Small】

In between exchanging gifts and blasting confetti, an official for the first Chinese company to establish roots in Nebraska said Monday that he plans over the “next few years” to create at least 30 jobs and invest $3 million in the states economy.

Wenliang Xu, majority owner and chief executive of the China-based international shipping company EasyWay International Ltd., said he also plans to add a warehouse and trucking operation in Nebraska in the future. He formed a Nebraska corporation with the same name as its parent company in China.

Xu and state and local officials, including Gov. Dave Heineman, gathered at EasyWays new North American headquarters at 12120 Port Grace Blvd., near PayPals office campus, for a ribbon cutting. The celebrants also popped small confetti containers in a salute to the festive Chinese tradition of firecrackers.

Xu, who purchased a home in the Eagle Run neighborhood in west Omaha, said it was the states workforce and central location between the East and West Coasts that made the expansion to Nebraska attractive. Xu said the $500,000 federal grant and tax incentives extended to EasyWay did not play an important role in the decision to open its North American headquarters in La Vista.
“Thats just something extra, not a major factor,” Xu said through his translator, Jennifer Zhang, who is contracted as the State of Nebraskas representative to China.

Zhang, who grew up in Shanghai, China, played an important role in drawing EasyWay to Nebraska, and has a role in working with other companies in China that could potentially invest in the state, Heineman said.

Some local business owners who run companies similar to EasyWay voiced concern about the government incentives.

Steve Sampson, owner of Sampson Corp., an Omaha-based importing and exporting business, said in a letter to Heineman and Sens. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., and Mike Johanns, R-Neb., that the funding was “wasteful” and “counterproductive.”

“Its not like (EasyWays owners) are bringing in an automobile factory or a new technology,” Sampson wrote. “You are just subsidizing an overseas competitor to do something that is already well established locally.”

Heineman said the state is interested in both helping local businesses grow and bringing new firms to the state. He urged locally owned businesses interested in expanding to contact the Nebraska Department of Economic Development.

“What we try to do every single day is help Nebraska businesses expand, and at the same time we want to recruit new businesses to our state,” Heineman said. “This is a very new opportunity to get a direct foreign investment in our state from China, the first ever. We want to help both.”

EasyWay is to match the $500,000 grant to supply start-up capital for its operations in Nebraska.

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