Beijing plans to send a survey team to land on small East China Sea islands at the centre of a bitter territorial dispute with Japan, state media reported Tuesday, in what would be a major escalation of the row.

Chinese marine surveillance vessels regularly patrol what Beijing says are its waters around the Diaoyu islands, prompting accusations of territorial incursions by Tokyo, which controls the outcrops and refers to them as the Senkakus. Activists from Taiwan and Hong Kong have landed on the islands, which Taipei also claims, but no representative of the Beijing government has sought to do and any attempt would be seen as highly provocative.