while their rmb trading partners are limited to those based in asean countries. in a nutshell, this voluntary initiative shouldn't make waves. >>tao: i think, symbolically, it's an interesting step - it's an important step. but, i think in the grand scheme of things, especially how little border trade as a share of china's total trade, i don't think it's that serious. (13) >>reporter: and small it is - even if everyone agreed to use rmb. in 2008, trade between asean and the two selected chinese regions amounted to just 3 percent of china's total 230 billion dollar trade with the bloc - or to put it another way, a mere quarter of a percent of china's 2.6 trillion dollar global total. >>: but, according to a government think tank, there's a lot more to this limited cross-border rmb plan than meets the eye. for it's actually just step one in a long term strategy to internationalise china's currency. >>xiaosong: in addition to asean, the rmb can then be used as a trading currency with india, pakistan, russia, japan and korea. and the third step is to use the rmb glob

looking at the lessons of hurricane andrew and what happens to address the concerns the say had i join asean that was working hard with the florida legislature to continue building and improve upon that. we found out in 1990 how much we were able to foreign and that have over 200 days of your activity well fires, floods and hurricane george. the situation was such it was the first time on the east coast with accurate is an entire county during wild fires because of the threats. 2001 was as i go there bush to serve as the director of emergency management and that october serving in that capacity the 2004 hurricane season where we have for land falling hurricanes, between 2004 and 2005 we had with a total of eight hurricanes hit the state of florida. five of which are major hurricanes and in addition to that immediate aftermath of hurricane katrina at the request of state of mississippi, we provided emergency management the sissons compact and ends up with 7,000 responders and spending $80 million in funds and running everything from search and rescue teams and communications and just about an

asean is meeting in thailand today. meanwhile, china's multibillion dollar investment agreement is expected to by finalized later on in the week. what will all this mean for the region's block? let's find out from our guest today. good to have you with us. >> thank you. >> this is a big break through, isn't it? with india and now with china. >> it is, i suppose. this is a block of economies where you have growing income with growing propensity to expand. everyone wants to expand services and the u.s. manufacturing is looking to see how they can tap into this. it doesn't make sense. you have india business minute or chinese businessmen or thai businessmen to look at how you can exploit the situation. >> could this regional packet between china and india and what happens with intraregion, could that somehow make up for what's lost elsewhere? >> still difficult. at the end of the day, there is global output itself. it's not as easy as it seems because at the end of the day, there are still interest groups which may perhaps