China's total population is 1.4 billion...
Last year Xiaomi reported 200 million users. I doubt they saw a 14 fold increase in that time period.
I think the point the author was making was that he doubts that MIUI has more users than Play Services Android. And yes, he's definitely aware that MIUI doesn't come with Play Services; he made some comments about the software stack in his Xiaomi Mi Note 2 review a couple days ago.
from XDA-Developers - Latest Comments by LumbarJack
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