The Chinese coastguard entered waters disputed with Japan for the first time Friday, straining an already tense situation as Tokyo mulled plans to establish a US Marines-style force to protect its islands.
Four vessels spent three hours in the territorial waters of a Tokyo-controlled archipelago, where they traded warnings with their Japanese counterparts.
The move -- by vessels whose crews were likely to be armed, according to academics -- marks an upping of the ante in the blistering row over ownership of the Senkakus, which Beijing claims and calls the Diaoyus.
It came the day Japan's defence ministry recommended establishing amphibious units and acquiring surveillance drones to protect outlying islands.
"To deploy units quickly in response to a situation, it is important... to have an amphibious function that is similar to (the) US Marines," capable of conducting landing operations on remote islands, it said.
The recommendation was part of an interim report approved by a high-level defence meeting on Friday, which said more hardware was needed to monitor distant islands.
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