In its latest effort to maintain an annual economic growth rate of 8%, China announced new plans to stimulate the country’s ailing real estate sector.

Lower global growth rates and rising energy and commodity costs are taking their toll on the Japan, which the IMF forecasts will grow in 2008 at its slowest rate in five years.

However, the Financial Times reports that the country’s export links to emerging markets are likely to shield it from the worst effects of the global recession:

Exports, which have been a big driver of growth in Japan’s economic recovery, have been surprisingly resilient in the face of a slowdown in the US