China is on the verge of becoming a world leader in Artificial Intelligence. However, according to Jeffery Ding of the Center for Governance of AI at the University of Oxford China’s AI status is highly overstated.

Ding’s stance on China and AI is a contrast to the belief that China and US might go to an artificial intelligence arms race. Because of the misinformation, US could either go overboard with its AI policy on China or even implement a policy that is misguided.

While speaking to the Fortune in a recent interview, Bing said that whatever has been written about China’s AI competency is far from reality. He further added that there is less comparison between China’s AI ability is far from that of other countries.

According to some reports, China leads the United States in several AI patents and research papers. However, Ding accuses Chinese research papers on Artificial Intelligence for not being good enough. To support his claim, he says that a number of Chinese scientists use American research papers in their studies. He says that had Chinese research papers on AI been good enough, they Chinese scientists and researchers would have been using them, instead of seeking help elsewhere.

Ding, in this interview also targeted another assumption about China’s AI abilities, that China possesses a huge workforce of AIT specialists. He said that quantifying the size of China’s AI workforce is impossible for there is no standard to do so. He says that a big number of people in China claim to be AI specialists. The truth is that these people only hold certifications on AI. According to him China lacks the skills that are normally possessed by people holding professional degrees in AI.

China is also known as the market leader in AI because it has managed to compile a huge data base of facial images. Facial recognition is a key subset of artificial intelligence.

Ding says that privacy expectations from China are also creating big misunderstanding in the west. Long story short, because of an authoritarian government in China, people in the west have the impression that the Chinese do not have a sense of privacy.

He also said that Chinese people are wary of the companies that fail to safeguard their personal data. They even fear that their data might get stolen. He added that, development in the field of AI is impossible unless data protection is ensured.