On September 5, the City Council of Birmingham in the UK declared itself effectively bankrupt. The UK is the world's sixth-largest economy; Birmingham is its second-largest city. What went wrong? John Ross, a senior fellow at the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies at Renmin University of China, said the government's austerity policy and Brexit did enormous damage to the UK economy. It led the UK to grow at a very slow pace. All major cities in the UK face great financial strains, and Birmingham has it the worst of all. Over the past four years, there has been almost no growth in the UK. And it puts pressure on the financial system of many countries. Ross says developing countries must become less dependent on developed countries. They need to strengthen South-South ties. He said there is already a tendency in world economics for developing countries to grow more rapidly than developed economies. And this trend is going to strengthen.