Dutch pension fund APG Asset Management will pay up to $650 million to take a 20 percent stake in Chinese warehouse firm e-Shang, also setting up a joint venture to expand in China, the companies said on Thursday.

E-shang, backed by private equity firm Warburg Pincus, and APG aim to tap strong demand for warehouses as Chinese e-commerce booms. The joint venture plans to develop and run modern logistics real estate assets across China.

"With the continued growth of third-party logistics, e-commerce and the evolution of domestic consumption patterns combined with a severe shortage in the supply of modern logistics facilities, we strongly believe that the logistics real estate sector in China will be a long-term beneficiary of these trends," Sachin Doshi, APG's head of non-listed real estate for Asia-Pacific, said in the statement.