China's Shandong Tranlin Paper Co Ltd will invest $2 billion in a paper and fertilizer plant in Virginia that will be China's largest greenfield project in the United States, Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe said on Wednesday.

Shandong Tranlin will make the investment over five years in Chesterfield County, near Richmond. The project will create 2,000 new jobs by 2020, McAuliffe said in a statement.

"Advanced manufacturing jobs are the heart of a strong and growing 21st century economy, and this investment symbolises the economic recovery taking place across the nation," McAuliffe, a Democrat, said in a statement.

The Virginia plant will use straw and corn stalks and other fibers to produce paper and fertilizers, and will be the company's first advanced manufacturing operation in the United States.

Shandong Tranlin is based in Liaocheng, China, and is centered on the pulp and paper industry. It produces annually 400,000 tons of refined pulp, 700,000 tonnes of machine-made paper, 400,000 tonnes of organic fertilizers and 2.4 billion food and medical packaging boxes, the statement said.

Virginia beat out several states for the project, it said.