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CHINA says it will consider a call from Australia and the US to carry out three-way military exercises in the interests of peace and stability.

Its ambassador, Zhang Junsai, was responding yesterday to the joint overture for the exercises to ease concerns about China's military ambitions and pave the way for stronger diplomatic ties.

As revealed by the Herald, the head of the US Pacific Command, Timothy Keating, and the Australian Defence Force chief, Angus Houston, met on Tuesday and agreed to approach separately the Chinese Ministry of National Defence to hold exercises and develop military relations ''at the earliest opportunity''.

''Of course anything that is conducive to peace and stability of the region, I think that we'll study it,'' Mr Zhang said, speaking at the Australian Institute of International Affairs in Canberra.

He said any countries could have different perceptions of different issues but relations between Australia and China were very solid.

Mr Zhang said China, Australia and New Zealand had a joint naval exercise in 2007 when they practised a humanitarian relief operations and rescues at sea.

The Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, said Australia had done some work with the Chinese military and further contact would be a good exercise in transparency

''I am long on the record that our respective militaries across the region should be acting much more closely together when it comes in particular to search and rescue operations, counter natural disaster operations,'' he said.

A Defence spokeswoman said Air Chief Marshal Houston backed the push for joint exercises but he stressed that the Government would have to approve the proposal. The idea was considered to be a natural progression in Australia's military engagement, she said.

The spokeswoman said Air Chief Marshal Houston placed a high priority on engaging China on matters of shared security interest.

An international security analyst, Rory Medcalf, backed the proposal but said the Government should have started pursuing the joint exercises earlier in the year, when it began to voice concern about China's military build-up.

''We could have mitigated a lot of the damage from the white paper if we had proposed something like this when we released it - or even in the lead-up,'' said Mr Medcalf, the Lowy Institute's program director for international security.

Shi Yinhong, professor of international relations at the People's University in Beijing, praised the initiative as being ''helpful and desirable or even imperative [for] long-term mutual confidence building and strategic stabilisation.''

He said the initiative was necessary ''for repairing the relationship with Beijing,'' although he cautioned that ''China might not make a quite positive response at this stage''.