Lausanne World Pulse – The Unreached Clusters of Southeast Asia
By Justin Long
“People group clusters” are groups of individual peoples clustered based on language and ethnic affinity. Worldwide, there are 252 clusters; 113 of these are considered least-reached. In this article, we focus on those in Southeast Asia.1
Southeast Asia is made up of ninety-two clusters, totaling roughly 567 million people. One-third of the world’s people group clusters are found in this region. Of these, forty (nearly half) have over ninety percent of their population within Southeast Asia. Eighteen clusters are immigrants, with fewer than twenty percent of their numbers in Southeast Asia.
For brevity, we will focus primarily on those which have more than ten million members. We will then look briefly at those with less than ten million members. The ten largest clusters include:
|
Cluster |
Number of members |
| Vietnamese | 73 million |
| Central Filipino | 70 million |
| Jawa | 58 million |
| Thai | 51 million |
| Malay | 46 million |
| Sunda-Betawi | 33 million |
| Chinese | 32 million |
| Burmese | 32 million |
| Madurese | 21 million |
| Mon-Khmer | 21 million |
With the exception of the Chinese and the Mon-Khmer, over ninety-five percent of each of these groups reside in Southeast Asia. However, because of their size, even five percent residing abroad can result in significant numbers.
Vietnamese. The Vietnamese cluster is made up of just two groups: the Vietnamese themselves as well as the twenty-nine thousand Jing. The Vietnamese are found in twenty-eight countries. Some 72.6 million are found in Vietnam itself, another one million are found within the region (in Cambodia, Laos, Malaysia, and Thailand), and the remaining three million are outside the region, mostly to France (600,000) and the United States (1.2 million). Reaching the Vietnamese, then, involves reaching Vietnam. Fortunately, this country is becoming more open; however, one should not neglect the migrant populations in the US and France. The Vietnamese cluster has significant work going on, but it is still majority Buddhist. To fully engage this cluster will likely require 730 pioneering swarming teams.2
Central Filipino. The seventy million Central Filipino cluster includes twenty-seven peoples. The largest groups within the cluster are the Tagalog speakers, the Ilocano, and the Visayan (each with more than ten million people), as well as the Central Bikol, Hiligaynon, Mestizo, Pampango, Pangasinese, and Waray-Waray. There are also a number of smaller groups. This cluster is considered reached, and missionaries from this cluster are being recruited and sent elsewhere.