China's Subway Boom Slows Down

China’s first ever subway runs through the heart of Beijing. Proposed in 1953 as a way to ferry soldiers from their barracks on the outskirts to the city center, the 13-mile, 16-station metro line opened in 1969 after years of debate, including one over the decision to ultimately knock down the 700-year-old Dadu City Wall that once protected the emperor of the Yuan Dynasty.

Beijing’s Line 1 didn’t opened to the public until the 1980s. And in the years that followed its initial run, subway expansion across China was a slow-moving process compared to the country’s rapid rate of urbanization. The second subway system, in the northeastern city of Tianjin, wouldn’t debut until 1984—15 years after the initial opening of Line 1. (Hong Kong’s opened in 1979, 18 years before the end of British rule.)