It seems to me that there's a happy middle between being an overbearing parent and being overly permissive. My parents let me do pretty much whatever I wanted as a kid and, well, I was pretty lazy. The thing is, if I'd had someone forcing me to do some of those things, I might actually have enjoyed them.
For instance, I took swimming lessons for a few years as a kid and enjoyed it, but one day I told my mom that I didn't want to sign up again for the next year, and she said, "okay, if that's what you want." I was just being lazy and later regretted not going. And now I can say it'd be cool if I had spent that time learning to be better swimmer than just watching TV.
As to the list in the OP, I would bet that some of those things contribute to a child's success and some don't. I doubt that learning to play piano and not liking it is more valuable than learning to play guitar and enjoying doing so.
Another anecdote from my own life, though: I found that when I was being lazy in school, not participating in class and not doing homework, I hated school, found myself confused in class, and was just bored. When I participated, listened, did the homework and kept up with class, I actually liked being there. For a parent to encourage that kind of participation, and even police it, may do more than make their children do well in school, it may also have the effect of making them enjoy it more. Of course, too demanding a workload, and too high expectations may have the opposite effect.
Simply stated, I think that there's value in encouraging children to have high expectations of themselves and the view that hard work is all that's necessary to achieve success. And I don't think children will often come to that on their own. But there is also value in many of the things that Dr Chua disparages: learning social skills through fun and relaxed interaction with other kids, play, having fun, experimenting to find what you like, pursuing those things about which you are passionate, and simply being able to relax.
A friend of mine and I were having a discussion a while ago, about his desire to have children. He is Korean-American and said that his parents drove him very hard. He found both value and loss in that approach: he has a strong work ethic, but he was also pushed into a field which he didn't find interesting, and says he wasted a good deal of his life unhappy. He's now running a game development company in china, and doing well, making less money that he could working for someone else back in the US, but happier for it. His view, which I found reasonable was this: encourage your children to excel at whatever they do, but let them decide what they are passionate about themselves.
