The Chinese in Prokop

Dr. Mirijana Markovic’s idea concerning the need for building a Chinatown in Belgrade was more or less forgotten after two years, even though it was propagated in a worthy campaign by the daily Politika: by orders of its director Hadzi Dragan Antic every Politika correspondent around the world rushed to send detailed texts about Chinatowns in metropolises in which they were assigned. The domestic public got through everything easily, publicly putting the initiative in the line of public conversations of the JUL director with snow, months, trees, and flowers, except individuals here and there complained due to the suggestion flowing from the palace camellias that the Chinatown must be located in the heart of Belgrade’s old town. These days, the idea has been revived, but everyone who feared destruction, Knez Mihailova Street be calm, the Chinatown will be built around the rail station in Prokop in the framework of a project destined for success, as written by Politika.

STRANGE ONE: On July 8, the first building sight was unveiled with world media pomp by Republican Prime Minister Mirko Marjanovic, President of the National Parliament Dragan Tomic, Ministers Branislav Ivkovic and Dejan Kovacevic, SRJ Consul in Shangai Branislav Jerotic, Politika Director Hadzi Dragan Antic, CIP Director Milutin Mrkonjic, ZTP “Belgrade’s” first man Zivorad Maksimovic...The Comrades were informed that 90 percent of the work in first phase was finished (there were six of them total of which the first, the station plateau, foundation, and columns, were the least expensive). Contractors of the current projects were praised:  Energoprojekat, Rad, Trudbenik, Ratko Mitrovic, Mostogradnja... It was heard that the station will be tied to rail traffic—trams and a future metro which will transport a majority of travelers. We learned that there already exists a four-way metro station above Prokop?! According to the words of Mr. Marjanovic, the completion of it will now connect us to European corridors and improve city traffic, and money received from “commercial contents” will enable a “liberation of the federal plateau’ in relation to the “large surface of land in the central city zone for the construction of the project “Belgrade on the Sava.” That is, for Europolis.

A few days later, Chinese Ambassador Pan Zanlin visited with project collaborators at the underground railway station under Vuk Monument. An impressive computer vision of the future railway station complex in Prokop was presented to the prominent guests. In the media’s eulogy, a large number of details were cited: that the main city rail station will be a “complex, multi-layered, traffic terminal, and business center”; that the station’s building, constructed on a plateau of 45,000 sq.m., will have around 19,000 sq.m. of business space; that a large shopping mall could be built on the top level, “the ideal opportunity for ‘Chinatown’”; that on the blocks to the left and to the right of the station building, there will be 160,000 sqm of hotels, department stores, stores, business centers, public services, and a garage in 6 levels...Plus a tower 215  meters tall, that according to the sketch the construction of a courtyard adjacent to the BIP with restaurants, telecommunications set up for police, army, and medical use is anticipated.
This pleasure will cost a good deal: in the last two years alone the finished work should have been worth approximately 230 million dollars, plus 10 million dollars as needed to run into Energoprojekat who as underwriter of the rail building expects a profit from “commercial contents.”(Malicious estimates that had  Energoprojekat not given money, it wouldn’t have gotten the job, or it was simply ordered to them).

A BIG HOLE: Unfortunately, the reality is a little different than the valiant dreams in CIP’s models and computer animation, to the proud master of ceremonies Mr. Mrkonjic.  In Belgrade, there already exists disagreement between traffic and construction experts around the “difficult” and “easy” metro, that is concerning the concept of public city transportation in the future. Both estranged currents, however, agree about one thing: Prokop is the worst possible imaginable location for the city’s central railway station. Dr. Vukan Vucic, who received his doctorate at Berkley, is a professor at UPENN, and the only traffic engineer at SANU, repeated this for the upteenth time in a lecture recently given at the Traffic Faculty.  One prominent professor from the Building Faculty even called the construction of the station in Prokup “returning the railway to the place of crime” alluding to the fact that this big hole originated with land excavated more than a century ago, with which they filled the famous swamp Venecija on which the old railway station is now located.

None of Vreme’s sources wish to speak under their full name: the new director’s right at the University has corked the mouths of experts from the faculty. When one promises them anonymity, it’s difficult for them to stop, “Belgrade’s traffic problem in the north-south direction. Kneza Milosa’s Street is overloaded, just think what it will look like if the main railway station flows from Prokop. From JNA Boulevard isn’t a better idea, alternatively, but once again through a roundabout direction. Twenty odd years ago, indeed,  a transversal was foreseen from Vracar straight to Prokop. But now I saw it on Mrkonjic’s model, but in it’s path is the clinical center, GAK, the hospital circle in general.  Perhaps one would be able to get by, but then Belgrade would be the only capital in the work in which the path from the center of town to the main railway station cuts across the hospital complex.  And the only city in which the station and the center share the highway. The station is inaccessible and the entire city transportation system would have to be changed, and that will cost. There simply isn’t room for such a complex,” said one city planner.

KRALJA MILANA JUNCTION: His colleague from the railway adds, “the railway is a big loss, out of every five dinars spent, we recover one, we give four to the state. If there is already money, I don’t see any reason to spend it on a new railway station when it exists under more urgent problems.  Changing the junction from Kralja Milana, for example. With an incomparably small investment, the existing railway station would still be able to function for a long time. It isn’t a narrow throat. The traffic that passes through here is now two and a half times less than that of happier times. Where do they get the idea that the season will quickly return and they need to increase capacity?” “Furthermore,” continued Vreme’s source, “blending the existing stations wouldn’t enable the ‘descent on the rivers’ nor the construction of Europolis: more than half the structures in the Sava’s bank don’t have links, those are technical extensions—part of a depot, a terminal for containers, space for washing wagons... For them there is no room in Prokup, where do they think to move it? The tunnel Milosevic opened pompously didn’t solve the problem around Kalemegdan because it didn’t occur to planners that there exists trains with poisonous, explosive, or simply odorous materials that don’t dare go that way. When they dug the tunnel, neither Beovoz, nor the underground station under Vuk’s Monument was foreseen. Freight trains were only let through at night, which is still not enough. To create even greater confusion, modern signals were built on the tracks around Kalemegdan, which up to now haven’t been placed because the tracks must be replaced. Talk of a “four-sided metro station” above Prokop is a shameless swindle of the public. It is a question of the most ordinary hole,100 meters deep dug through on the chance that one day they might get the money together for a metro. That is now a little cellar that serves as a warehouse. A colleague tells me that these days they are calculating the required number of travelers through Prokop, yet they probably should have done that before the first shovel broke ground. Generally, I don’t understand who needs this useless waste of money? Is Mrkonjic trying to shade crudeness and justify the great money that is poured into CIP?

WAITING FOR THE INJECTION: From the experts point of view, therefore, Prokop is a total miss. The situation isn’t any better when it is a question of commercial work, because one can’t see how the working space in the “back of town” could suddenly become attractive. Forcing Prokop as a commercial center is just like persuading the owners of stores on Prince Mihail Street to move to the Big War Island or some other similar place.

What then is all the fuss about, and why spend money we don’t have? Transforming CIP’s model into reality would cost, according to unofficial estimates, barely six billion dollars. From where? Well, from the Chinese.  In the media it has been said more than once that “all investment possibilities will be injected with capital from the Far East into Prokup”, that they, “expect concrete steps from Chinese investors”, and that, “it would enable the investment of Chinese partners in commercial contents of the railway station in Prokop, and especially the possibility of building a Chinatown in this location, further strengthening the collaboration between the Chinese and domestic economy.” What do the Chinese think of that? Dang Jinvu, economic advisor at the Chinese Embassy, announced at the presentation that his countrymen are skilled businessmen, that no one can force them to invest money and that they will come by themselves if they sense the possibility for profit. Translated into Serbian from the polite language of a civilization developed many millenniums ago, “Make your miracle, Comrades, then we’ll see.”

Well, even the Chinese haven’t achieved this kind of economic advance investing money into any kind of world idiocy offered to them?