We can be mates with US and China: Howard

Australia can be friends with both China and the United States, and should stop talking itself into a fight between the two nations, former prime minister John Howard says.

Mr Howard said he did not share the pessimistic view that a conflict between the superpowers was inevitable.

"Let's not imagine that China is running around looking for a fight," Mr Howard said in Perth on Thursday.

"She has far too many internal domestic problems to deal with.

"China will assert herself. Every nation that acquires economic strength will enterprise a defence capacity to match it."

Mr Howard said preserving good relations between the Chinese and the Americans should be the foreign policy objective of the Australian government.

But he said the nation would always be closer to the US because of history and shared values.

"We don't have to choose - we can be friends with both," Mr Howard said.

"In the end, the things that bind nations together more tightly than trade or even iron ore and coal is, of course, common values.

"The values that we share in common with the United States are deeper than those that we have with China."