SEOUL - Samsung Electronics, the world's biggest memory chip maker, said Friday that it started its full- scale production of memory chips in its China plant.

Samsung said in a statement that its memory fabrication line in Xi'an, China has begun full-scale manufacturing operations, noting the new facility will produce 3D V-NAND, or its advanced NAND flash memory chips.

Construction of the new factory took 20 months since Samsung broke ground there in September, 2012. The total area of the facility is around 230,000 square meters, situated on 1.14 million square meters of land. "The city of Xi'an was the starting point of the Silk Road, which had performed a key role in bridging cultures from the East and the West. We expect that our new facility in Xi'an will mark the crowning of a 21st century Silk Road," Samsung's vice chairman Kwon Oh-hyun said at a plant inauguration event.

The South Korean tech behemoth said that it has secured a solid memory production base in China by launching the plant, stressing China is a market where some 50 percent of global NAND flash is generated from production bases operated by many IT companies.

Samsung said it will complete construction of its entire Xi'an complex, which includes an assembly facility and test line, by the end of this year.

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