The China Price: heading for a labor shortage

I have mentioned here already a few times the book by Alexandra Harney, The China Price: The True Cost of Chinese Competitive Advantage, truly one of the best documented books on labor in China I have seen recently.
The problem with any book is of course that the situation has developed further, by the time it hits the shelves. The main contradiction that remains after reading the book is that two lines of thinking about the future of China's labor remain.
The first one, mostly represented by the labor advocates in the Hong Kong labor scene, says that China's workers are is a disadvantaged position, because of the huge amount of labor resources; implying they need help to improve their situation.
The second one points at the increasing shortage of labor, allowing migrant workers more than in the past to make their own choices, leaving employers with a poor reputation. That implies that migrant workers mainly need support to help themselves, as the major excesses of the past have already been removed for a huge part.
Harney seems to lean to the second viewpoint, but does not do so very clear. Possibly in a country of the size of China, both options can be true next to each other. Harney correctly points at the new wave of urbanization, forcing the Chinese government to find jobs for 300 million workers making a permanent move from the country side to the city.
I'm more strongly leaning in the direction of the second viewpoint. I believe that new labor laws, on contracts and arbitration, and the changes at China's only labor union ACFTU are more an acknowledgement of ongoing shifts in China's economic realities that the reverse. Employers, often led by lawyers, have been trying to stop or mitigate the effects of those legal movements. While I do think it is important that all stakeholders come to terms with those new laws, they are not the cause of the change, but merely a reflection.