China has called on North Korea to suspend its nuclear and missile activities in exchange for the US and South Korea halting military war games, to avoid what it called a "head-on collision".

"To defuse the looming crisis on the [Korean] peninsula, China proposes that as a first step, the DPRK [Democratic People's Republic of Korea] may suspend its nuclear and missile activities in exchange for the halt of the large-scale US-ROK exercises," Foreign Minister Wang Yi said on Wednesday, using the acronyms for the two Koreas.

He also said South Korea is making a mistake in deploying the US anti-missile defence system THAAD, which he said undermined China's security.