Starbucks Corp, the world's biggest coffee-shop chain, said it planned to source coffee from China for the first time as it expands in a country with more than 5,000 years of tea-drinking culture.

Starbucks has been working with coffee farmers in China's southwestern Yunnan province to help them meet sourcing standards and has sent coffee shipments to the United States for testing, Starbucks China President Wang Jinlong said at the Reuters China Century Summit on Tuesday.

"China does produce some quality coffee," Wang said at the summit, held at the Reuters office in Shanghai.

He added that sourcing from China would start "very soon, maybe in a couple of years".

Starbucks also plans to build a roasting plant in China, where its sales are outpacing market growth, Wang said, adding that China's coffee consumption is increasing 20 to 25 percent each year.

He reiterated that Seattle-based Starbucks aimed to more than triple its global outlets to 40,000 and expected China to become its biggest overseas market.