China will intervene if America attacks North Korea first, according to a state-owner paper, and will only stay neutral if Kim Jong-un attacks the US first.

An editorial in the Global Times, warned that 'China should also make clear that if North Korea launches missiles that threaten US soil first and the US retaliates, China will stay neutral.

'If the US and South Korea carry out strikes and try to overthrow the North Korean regime and change the political pattern of the Korean Peninsula, China will prevent them from doing so.'

China will intervene if America attacks North Korea first, according to a state-owner paper, and will only stay neutral if Kim Jong-un attacks the US first. President Donald Trump (left) and North Korean leader (Kim Jon-un)

An editorial in the Global Times, (stock image) warned that 'China should also make clear that if North Korea launches missiles that threaten US soil first and the US retaliates, China will stay neutral

The warning comes amid escalating tensions between the US and North Korea.

Pyongyang has warned it plans to launch a nuclear strike on Guam after President Trump announced that any more threats against the US would be met with 'fire and fury'.

Pentagon chief James Mattis issued his own warning among the increasingly aggressive rhetoric, telling Kim Jong-un that he risks destroying his regime and his people if he attacks.

Today, Trump ratcheted up his rhetoric towards Jong-un, warning Pyongyang against attacking Guam or U.S. allies.

The magnitude of the nuclear crisis was underlined as one White House aide, Sebastian Gorka, compared it to the Cuban Missile Crisis.

China, North Korea's most important ally and trading partner, has reiterated calls for calm during the current crisis.

It has expressed frustration with both Pyongyang's repeated nuclear and missile tests and with behavior from South Korea and the United States that it sees as escalating tensions.

The widely read state-run Times, published by the ruling Communist Party's official People's Daily, wrote in an editorial that Beijing is not able to persuade either Washington or Pyongyang to back down.

'If the U.S. and South Korea carry out strikes and try to overthrow the North Korean regime and change the political pattern of the Korean Peninsula, China will prevent them from doing so.'

Foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang has urged the United States and North Korea on Friday to be 'cautious' with their words and actions after the two sides stepped up their bellicose rhetoric over Pyongyang's weapons programme.

He called on both sides to avoid 'going down the old path of alternately showing strength and continuously escalating the situation'.

The editorial says that China will intervene if America attacks North Korea first

'The current situation on the Korean Peninsula is highly complicated and sensitive. We call on the relevant parties to be cautious with their words and actions, and contribute more toward easing tensions and enhancing mutual trust,' Geng said in a statement.

China has long worried that any conflict on the Korean peninsula, or a repeat of the 1950-53 Korean war, could unleash a wave of destabilizing refugees into its northeast, and could end up with a reunified county allied with the United States.

North Korea is a useful buffer state for China between it and U.S. forces based in South Korea, and also across the sea in Japan.

The Global Times said China will 'firmly resist any side which wants to change the status quo of the areas where China's interests are concerned'.

'The Korean Peninsula is where the strategic interests of all sides converge, and no side should try to be the absolute dominator of the region.'

Amid heightened tensions in the region, Beijing staged 'large-scale' military exercises with dozens of ships, fighter jets and submarines adjacent to the Korean Peninsula on Monday - just months after moving 150,000 troops to its border with North Korea.

Say Kim Jong-un does risk all out war by attacking Guam, in what some experts have branded a 'suicide' move, what force does the US have to beckon from its bases in the region?

Calling the situation on the Korean Peninsula 'complicated and sensitive', China's foreign ministry issued a statement warning that parties involved in the impasse should avoid 'words and actions that escalate the situation'.

Russia, meanwhile, moved military equipment including helicopters and combat vehicles to its southern frontier with the hermit state earlier this year. Moscow has displayed its own frightening military strength at a war games event in Siberia this week and during a vast Navy Day parade in Vladivostok - about 100 miles from North Korean territory.

Germany urged both North Korea and the United States to show 'restraint' in their mounting war of words.

'We are watching the increasing rhetorical escalation regarding the Korean Peninsula with the greatest concern,' foreign ministry spokesman Martin Schaefer told reporters. 'That is why we call on all sides to use restraint.'

Schaefer said Berlin was convinced a 'military option' could not be 'the answer in the quest for a nuclear weapon-free Southeast Asia'.

He urged the international community to 'thoroughly implement' the latest round of sanctions against North Korea approved by the United Nations Security Council and backed a call by Tillerson to resume talks with Pyongyang if it halts ballistic missile tests.

Trump stopped just short of a firm promise to declare war on Kim's government if the dictatorship continues to talk about 'physical action' to the U.S. during the meeting in New Jerseyon Tuesday with Kellyanne Conway (left), HHS Secretary Tom Price, (second left), Melania Trump (second right) and the National Drug Control Policy Center's Richard Baum (right)

'We must all continue our diplomatic efforts - it is the only way to ensure that the threat of the illegal North Korean nuclear weapons programme can be contained,' he said.

However, the US would not be alone if it did decide to strike first.

Australia 'will come to the aid of the United States' if North Korea attacks, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said Thursday, after Pyongyang outlined its plans to fire missiles near the US territory of Guam.

The Australian leader's comments of support to close ally Washington followed President Donald Trump's warning to North Korea that it should be 'very, very nervous' of the consequences if the isolated nation even thought of attacking US soil.

'The United States has no stronger ally than Australia,' Turnbull told Melbourne commercial radio station 3AW. 'And we have an ANZUS agreement and if there is an attack on Australia or the United States then... each of us will come to the other's aid.

'So let's be very clear about that. If there is an attack on the United States by North Korea, then the ANZUS treaty will be invoked and Australia will come to the aid of the United States.'

The European Union said tensions over North Korea can only be resolved by peaceful means, with foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini's spokeswoman saying the developments are 'of great concern to the EU.'

Relations between Washington and Pyongyang have been tense for months, in the wake of the North's repeated missile tests, including two successful intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) test launches in July.

The escalating dispute took an unexpected turn Tuesday when Trump seemed to borrow from the North's arsenal of rhetoric and said it faced 'fire and fury like the world has never seen' if it continued to threaten the US.

A Washington Post report suggested that North Korea had invented a miniaturized warhead that it has the capability of attaching to the intercontinental ballistic missiles its been testing

Trump himself fired another flare in Kim Jong-Un's direction on Wednesday morning, saying in tweets the United States' nuclear arsenal is 'stronger and more powerful than ever before' and he 'hopefully' won't need to use it.

'My first order as President was to renovate and modernize our nuclear arsenal. It is now far stronger and more powerful than ever before,' Trump said. 'Hopefully we will never have to use this power, but there will never be a time that we are not the most powerful nation in the world!'

Trump made the show of might on social media after his secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, tried to dial down the conflict as he returned to Washington from Southeast Asia on a trip that included a pit stop in Guam.

Guam, which is roughly 2,128 miles from North Korea, is home to both Andersen Air Force Base and Naval Base Guam housing thousands of American service members and their families.

Roughly 28 percent of the island is occupied by the U.S. military. The base houses bomber assurance and deterrence missions, including six B-52s which the air force says provide 'strategic global strike capability [to] deter potential adversaries and provide reassurance to allies' and that they are ready to go.

North Korea has said it could carry out a pre-emptive operation if the U.S. showed signs of provocation.

Tillerson said Trump's 'fire and fury' charge to Kim shouldn't have Americans panicking because North Korea does not pose an 'imminent threat' to the United States.

Pyongyang's volatile dictator has warned that he was 'carefully examining' plans to make 'an enveloping fire' around Guam, which is home to about 163,000 people and a sprawling American military base.

The UN Security Council on Saturday approved tough sanctions which could cost Pyongyang US$1 billion a year, with the sweeping measures the first of that scope to be imposed on North Korea since Trump took office.