Good question. Technically it includes a sizeable portion of muslims/muslin countries like pakistan, I believe. It is therefore a misleading article, imo, because most think ‘Asians’ is synonymous with ‘Oriental’.
Asian, in the British Empire, means one thing ~ people from South Asia ~ that is, Pakistan and India, and Sri Lanka. In America those same people are called Paks, Indians, and they look like Indians but they think they are different!
Asian-Americans are listed in the Census information ~ for a long time Thai-Americans were not so identified because, lo and behold, Thailand was an enemy nation in WWII, like Japan, and they were not included in the minority category for notice or benefit.
That still goes back and forth ~ one day Thais are Asians, the next day they aren't.
Indonesia and Malaysia are frequently overlooked in all this because there have not yet been any large numbers of immigrants from either country. Still, they have decided they speak the same basic root language as the Philippines ~ to wit, Tagalog, so you get a dictionary, figure out how to concatenant words and do pidgin English with Bhassa words. Lots of fun to do at parties.
A very large subgroup in that part of the world are the overseas Chinese group who speak Hokien with a 30% Dutch based vocabulary. They are probably the wealthiest people on Earth, per capita, and have almost no political influence outside of what they can buy, and they can buy a lot. Soros ain't no thang compared to these guys!