the emerging middle class in China and other developing countries makes this overbuilding more of a curiosity than a worry for investors with a long-term horizon.
Maybe so - but an investor with that kind of time horizon better have a realistic psychological self assessment of their capability to take a rollercoaster ride without vomiting. With that kind of extreme overbuilding at some point there will be another crisis like the asian financial crisis - it may be transient, but it can be pretty unpleasant at the time.