The Marshall Islands has condemned China's recent submarine-launched missile test nearby in the Pacific Ocean, adding that its Micronesian region cannot be treated as a site for military signalling.

The landing of the missile was said to be close to Tuvalu's exclusive economic zone albeit not inside its territorial waters and about 1000 kilometres northeast of the Solomon Islands, based on flight-path analysis shared by Taiwan's National Security Council, which also forced Tuvalu's Prime Minister Matthew Wale to issue a separate statement this week.

A statement from the office of Marshall Islands President, Hilda Heine, said small Pacific states know all too well the cost of nuclear testing. The sovereign state of five islands and a further 29 atolls, which has compact Free Association with the United States, a staunch critic of China, has a long history with nuclear weapons testing.

Between 1946 and 1958, the US Armed Forces conducted 67 nuclear tests around the Marshall Islands, profoundly affecting their people, culture and environment for decades to come.

Mr Heine's statement said the July 6 launch, which Beijing described as nothing more than routine, struck a nerve in a region scarred by decades of nuclear experimentation.

"No nation understands the weight of nuclear testing in Pacific waters better than ours," Mr Hilde said, noting that the Marshallese people have "bore the cost" of the detonations as generations have been historically forced to "live with the consequences still" to this day.

The statement also rejected Beijing's apparent attempt to downplay the gravity of the launch, which featured a dummy warhead.

While China had asked observers "not to overinterpret" the test, the Marshall Islands urged Beijing to recognise "that a region asking for peace is not a region inviting a demonstration of force".

The Marshall Islands government also invoked the Pacific Islands Forum's Blue Pacific Ocean of Peace Declaration, which was endorsed in September last year, saying Pacific leaders had already made clear their commitment to keep the region free from "conflict and rivalry".

The Chinese are also a party to protocols II and III of the Treaty of Rarotonga, which targets five key nuclear-weapon states recognised under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty that also established the South Pacific as a nuclear-free zone.

By ratifying the protocols in 1988, Beijing committed not to test nor to threaten the use of nuclear weapons in the region.

"Upholding the treaty's intent requires not only adherence to its letter, but also good faith in preserving the Pacific as an Ocean of Peace," Ms Heine said in the statement.

The Marshall Islands government says it is calling on China, "as we have called on every nuclear power before it" to explain its intentions clearly and to respect the security concerns of Pacific states.

"We are a small nation," she said.

"We do not raise this history lightly, nor do we invoke it for rhetorical effect."