As a Chinese American guy with great grades, I believe your friend is full of BS (unless she's "Chinese" in that she actually lives in China). In HS / College, I've never seen good grades = popularity.
I believe that's precisely what he meant - in Asia guys with good grades are valued quite highly by the womenfolk. That being said, IMHO this is temporary - girls will still go for the bad biker dude (or its Asian equivalent) in the end.
I think it has lots to do with cultural values. I went to elementary school in Taiwan for 4 years. In an asian education environment, you need to take exams after exams to get into good schools to get a good job. Not to say it isn't the same in the states, but it's on a different level. In junior high school, it isn't uncommon to see kids stay at school for 14 hours plus to study months on end. Most schools have rankings for midterms/finals, and some give out a slap on the wrist for every point under 90 (at least when I went to school) to reinforce the importance of studying.
So being bad academically is more like losing a school wide competition, rather than the American system of being able to shrug it off as something you don't care about. In Asian countries, they don't buy the idea that people can be talented at different things, it's more a black and white "you're smart or you're not" thing. So of course people like winners more than losers.
So back to the point in the article.. I don't think it's about the actual utility of a person's skill, but the perceived successfulness within the context of societal values.
Which brings up an interesting point: other than using the societal values, how else will you know how successful a person is when real success is often based on luck and isn't apparent until ~30?
Keep in mind that Shanghai has its own local culture that is quite (in)famous throughout China and the Pacific Rim, so her experiences may not be applicable to China as a wider whole.