Is there a Google play store apk available somewhere? Everyone keeps telling me that such apk has never been published by Google. Is that so?

I need to put Google Play Store on a Chinese mobile, but I cant root nor flash it with a custom recovery ROM. I wanted to use the Open Gapps zip but all of those require custom recovery. Any ideas?

Thanks a lot in advance!
I think they are wrong, since the .apk file are found on various apk hosting sites. You can grab one from APKmirror, and can always update it once it is installed.