Elite software developers definitely exist especially when you measure the magnitude of contributions made to the industry and how influential the contribution was. I would definitely place a guy like John Carmack in the elite class considering his contributions to many notable video games over the years. This type of measure is not all that different than sports where an athlete's greatness is measured through the number of championships won and individual stats and records. I would definitely argue that the difference in talent between a competent/average individual in software probably isn't as big as in sports. If you quantify how "elite" an individual is in software by their influential contributions to the industry versus championships won and records set in sports, you're definitely more likely to achieve "elite" status in software. Take Ruby on Rails as an example, DHH is a hell of a programmer considering he's built a multi-million dollar business in Basecamp and how popular and influential Rails has been to web development. Now consider the confluence of factors that allowed Rails to get huge. Things such as design, code quality, timing, marketing, luck, etc. all played roles to differing degrees. If you compared this to something like being an elite basketball player there are even more factors out of your control. Being elite in basketball is pretty much impossible. If you're 6ft and 180 pounds there is no way you can reach the level of greatness of a guy like Michael Jordan. In a sport like basketball genetics plays a huge role in establishing the base for an individual to become elite, and obviously a ton of hard work on top of those genetics too. If you don't possess the combination of height, athleticism, strength, speed, long arms, big hands, basketball intelligence, etc. there's absolutely no way you can reach Jordan or LeBron's level.
With every industry where you need some sort of specialized skill and are able to quantify influential achievements in some sort of way, there are always going to be elite individuals.
I think one of the interesting things about this article is the principle of relatively and how people will tend to do things within their means. You're more likely to violate traffic rules if you have a more expensive car because it's faster than the other cars and you want to be able to utilize the car's features or you know if you do something wrong and get caught, you're able to pay off the fines because you have so much money. I'm sure there's a ton of rich people who are very happy, and I'm guessing the proportion of happy rich people would be about the same as the proportion of happy average people. I think one of the things these studies do is that they use the relatively small and highly selected sample size of rich people and compare them to a group of normal people and then come to a generalized conclusion of rich people being more miserable than average people. But I would beg to differ if you were to take rich people in other industries besides the banking industry, such as tech, healthcare, or natural resources you'd probably find a lot of people who love their loves.
While the definition of "success" is pretty widespread, how "success" is defined in China is probably a more rigid and narrow idea compared to what "success" would mean in some Western countries. Some people in places like the US or England would define success as doing something they love to do everyday, which doesn't necessarily mean you have to have a good education or have a lot of money. From living in China and talking to a fair number of people there, I'm postulating their more narrow-minded views of success is imposed by the culture and to a varying degree by the government.
I would argue the culture around education and what it takes to be successful in China is more of the driving force around the enormous pressure students face with the "gaokao". Although it is true there are way too many students than available spots at top flight universities, the perceived notion of success will never change in China unless success is redefined by something other than either having a really good education or making tons of money.
With every industry where you need some sort of specialized skill and are able to quantify influential achievements in some sort of way, there are always going to be elite individuals.