BEIJING, May 8  -- Is peaceful, scientific research over Antarctica a sin? We don't think so, but a recent report on the front page of The New York Times apparently disagreed.

The report, titled "Chinese Aspirations in Antarctica Fuel Concern," detailed China's academic endeavors to explore the terra nullius, only to settle on a note that's been all too familiar with Western coverage of whatever China does: "there is growing concern about its intentions."

"We should have no illusions about the deeper agenda," the report warned, quoting an Australian expert, who went on to explain that "a big driver of Chinese policy is to secure long-term energy supply and food supply."

Forgive our shortsightedness, but we fail to see how the world's coldest, driest and highest-elevated continent could realistically meet the needs of 1.3 billion people to any meaningful extent in the foreseeable future.

It was quite a leap, by the report's own admission, to note China is a signatory to the Antarctic Treaty that "bans military activity and aims to preserve it as one of the world's last wildernesses" until 2048.

Besides, "the difficulty of extraction in such severe conditions and uncertainty about future commodity prices make it unlikely that China or any country would defy the ban on mining anytime soon."

So one would understand our inability to grasp what practical concern there is. Our concern, however, is once more fueled by the mentality behind reports like this one.

We hate to take a jab at our bespectacled colleagues in the media, but too often Western news reports that are supposed to be, or claimed to be, objective turned out to cry wolf on China without substantiating the threats they implied.

In the Antarctica case, the report could not produce a single piece of incriminating evidence because there simply is not any. The best the report could do are "China is building a sophisticated $300 million icebreaker," and "It has also bought a high-tech fixed-wing aircraft," as well as the last two paragraphs which could be summarized in one sentence: the Chinese tourists are at the gate.

But they stood a far cry from arousing any legitimate concerns that reasonable minds should be concerned about.

Failing conviction based on acts, the report, and quite a few of its peers, resorted to distorting and exaggerating intent, in this case the perceived deliberate strategic ambiguity of China by using quotes like "China is playing a long game in Antarctica and keeping other states guessing about its true intentions and interests are part of its poker hand," to institute a sense of rattling uncertainty, notwithstanding China's stated Antarctica policy which is no different at all from other countries.

And that is what frustrates us most: the singling out of China for things that every other country does, or actually has been doing for much, much longer. To put this in perspective, allow us to cherrypick two separate sentences from the report and reorder them: "In the unspoken competition for Antarctica's future, scientific achievement can also translate into influence. But now China seems determined to catch up."

In other words, if "early explorers, especially the United Statesand Australia" were to maintain dominance over Antarctica, rest assured with their "true intentions and interests", while everybody else could live happily ever after.

Such is the not uncommon hypocrisy underlining some of our Western colleagues' reports of China in world affairs. Much as they preach fair and balanced journalism for all upon their non-state ownership and management, bias toward their own national interests and paranoia over a peacefully catching-up China still loom large.