Harvesting intellectual property around the globe, China is building a technological specter with help from Motorola, Siemens, Kawasaki Heavy Industries, Hitachi, and Canada’s Bombardier, which is partnering with China’s own Sifang. Most impressive in this international smorgasbord is the IBM Global Rail Innovation Center that opened last year in Beijing. Its purpose is to stir the world’s rail leaders into meaningful debate over how to build smarter railroads. Dedicating about 400 employees to the center, it’s IBM’s way of making China’s rail network the most advanced in the world — and making its client happy.

Today, IBM’s chairman, Samuel Palmisano, is preaching the values of investing in infrastructure here in the United States, but in Chinese style. Urging politicos to invest in “smart” infrastructure, in a Wall Street Journal article he said, “Congress and the administration need to recognize something that industries like IT and telecommunications understood two decades ago. They were transformed by smarter systems … Now sectors where much of our future growth lies, and where the government tends to play a large role — such as energy, health care, and transportation — need to jump on the bandwagon.”

Less than an hour after landing at Shanghai International Airport during a recent trip to China, I was seated on the world’s only commercially operable Magnetic Levitation train. Service on the Maglev began on Jan. 1, 2004.

Choosing the George Jetson mode over a cab, I converted eight U.S. dollars into Chinese Yuan for the thrill of riding the fastest train on earth that’s performing milk runs. Showing off somewhere between Pudong International Airport and Shanghai, the train’s digital speedometers mounted at the ends of each wide-bodied car illuminate our top speed: 431 kph. The wheel-less train lifts off while taking flight over a magnetized cushion of air. Smooth, quiet, and powerful, the train’s acceleration presses me into my seat — a sensation that has never been felt on an Amtrak train. The landscape blurs. Is traffic on the eight-lane highway beneath moving? It’s hard to know, blasting along at 268 mph.

In 2008, I attended China’s debutant, the Beijing Summer Olympic Games. The sporting event, in my opinion, was a sensational reason to build critical infrastructure including highways, subways, and airport terminals. A week before the torch ignited the opening ceremonies inside the Bird’s Nest, Beijing officials inaugurated their high-speed rail (HSR) project with a high-speed train to take athletes and spectators to water-based events in the port city of Tianjin. The rails now speed the flow of commerce between landlocked Beijing and the important port city.

China’s wheel-less Magnetic Levitation train takes flight over a magnetized cushion of air, getting up to 268 mph.

China is acting on intelligence that the United States is ignoring. HSR trains are the future. They have more doors than planes so 1,000-person trains that have twice the seats of a 747 can empty out quickly into downtown stations. HSR trains travel nearly as fast as aircraft and much faster than motor vehicles are allowed to go. China’s speeding trains are taking service away from state-run airlines servicing the same routes. The added mode of transport frees up bottlenecks in the corridor between Shanghai and Beijing. This is as vital a route in China as the one between Boston and Washington, D.C. Instead of filling lanes of traffic with Fung Wah-like buses, China is building a HSR line that will lessen congestion on its new highways, free up airspace, and speed the 664-mile trip. Constructing 24 stations, service times will drop from 14 hours to just 5 hours. China, a nation nearly the same geographic size as the United States, is shortening travel times between its 30 provinces while travel times between U.S. states continue to grow longer.

This is the year of the tiger. China started its new year with another world record-setting run on its newest HSR line, The Harmony Express. Clocking in at 245 mph during its regular route of nearly 700-mile service between Guangzhou and Wuhan, the train service boasts the highest speed any nation is willing to post as regularly scheduled service. The Harmony Express blew past France’s formerly fastest long-range train in the world, the TGV line, that puts in a respectable 173 mph — 100 mph faster than the fastest in the United States.

Apparently, there is no stopping this runaway high-speed train called China.

Dan McNichol is a highly acclaimed author, journalist, and speaker. He welcomes your comments at dan@danmcnichol.com.

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