The Solomon Islands government has secured a $66m (A$96m) loan from China to build 161 mobile communication towers, which will be built and supplied by Chinese telco giant Huawei. It is the Pacific country’s first loan from Beijing since it switched diplomatic allegiance from Taiwan to China in 2019 and is a significant bilateral development between the two countries, which signed a secretive and controversial security deal earlier this year. The Huawei move was celebrated by the Solomon Islands government as “a historical financial partnership” between the two countries that would “work closely to ensure the successful implementation … of…