Taiwan Tati Cultural and Educational Foundation

President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) is expected to call a high-level national security meeting on Tuesday during which she would order the expansion of conscription from four months to one year, a source familiar with the matter said.

On Dec. 7, Minister of National Defense Chiu Kuo-cheng (邱國正) told lawmakers that a decision on the length of military service would be announced before the end of the year.

With its inventive videos and bizarre memes, TikTok once billed itself as “the last sunny corner on the Internet.” Since launching five years ago, the app has become a global sensation, amassing millions of users every year.

Despite delighting consumers and advertisers, others believe the “sunny” app has a dark side. As ByteDance is the parent company of TikTok and is headquartered in China — a nation whose government is known for surveillance and propaganda — its ownership has triggered fear about it becoming a Chinese Communist Party (CCP) tool for tracking people worldwide and censoring content.