Tokyo Says New Chinese Satellite Violates World Pact : Telecom: Apstar-1 was squeezed into an orbit between Russia’s Rimsat and Japan’s Sakura 3a.

A Chinese satellite intended for use by many well-known broadcasters has been launched in defiance of international rules into an orbit where it will disrupt Japanese telecommunications, government officials here have charged.

“We’ll immediately take appropriate measures if China switches on the satellite transponders and causes transmission interference with our satellite,” an official of Japan’s Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told Reuters news agency Friday. He did not specify what Japan’s action would be.

Reuters Television is one of the clients scheduled to use the Chinese Apstar-1 satellite, launched Thursday into an orbit squeezed between a Japanese and a Russian satellite. The new satellite is expected to start transmissions in about a month.

Other broadcasters that have been expected to use Apstar-1 include CNN, ESPN, Home Box Office Asia, Viacom International, Discovery Communications, TVB International and Hong Kong’s Television Broadcasts Ltd. Some have made back-up plans, however.

The increasingly bitter Tokyo-Beijing dispute heightens the possibility that more broadcasters will turn to using a privately owned satellite, called the PAS-2, that was built by Hughes Aircraft Co. for PanAmSat Corp.

The PAS-2 was launched by France’s Arianespace July 8 from French Guiana to an orbit positioned to serve the Asia-Pacific region. PanAmSat is controlled by founder Rene V. Anselmo and the Mexican firm Grupo Televiso.

The new Chinese satellite is positioned close to a Japanese satellite known as Sakura 3a that handles much of the international telecommunications and other services of Nippon Telegraph & Telephone Corp. Earlier this month, an NTT spokesman said problems could be prevented by a minor shift in the planned orbit of the Chinese satellite.

Tokyo has been pressing Beijing for more than a year to either alter the satellite’s planned orbit or agree not to use bandwidths employed by the Sakura 3a. Japan sent a delegation to Beijing to seek a solution to the problem, but it met with no success, the ministry official said.

Japan charges that China is violating rules established by the International Telecommunications Union, a 182-country, United Nations-affiliated body that supervises the global use of satellite positions and broadcast frequencies. The union lacks effective enforcement powers, however.

Some analysts fear that if China flouts global rules, there could be a destructive and expensive breakdown of international order in satellite transmissions. China is aggressively seeking to promote its satellite-launch services as an inexpensive alternative to Western competitors.

The Apstar-1 is owned by APT Satellite Co. of Hong Kong, a Beijing-controlled consortium that includes three Chinese government bodies, Singapore Telecom and companies backed by investors from Thailand, Macao and Taiwan.

Japan’s Sakura 3a is in an orbit that positions it constantly at a longitude of 132 degrees east, while Russia’s Rimsat orbits at 130 east. China said it was placing the Apstar-1 between these two satellites, at 131 degrees east. Tokyo insists that that is too close to avoid interference. “Because Japan had placed its satellite earlier than China, the international rules oblige China to secure consent from us, but there has been no action whatsoever from China,” the ministry official said.

As controversy over the planned Chinese launch heated up earlier this month, an APT Satellite spokesman in Hong Kong insisted that Japan had no basis for concern. The company, he said, was working out “a technical solution to minimize the effect if interference should occur.”