It is April. The handover is still more than two months away. Yet the Royal Navy's White Ensign has already been lowered over HMS Tamar and the first People's Liberation Army servicemen have settled into their new quarters at Stonecutters Island.
The Royal Navy has not quite shut up shop yet: a frigate, HMS Chatham, and the landing ship Sir Percivale will be in the harbour on June 30 alongside the royal yacht Britannia, demonstrating sovereignty to the last.
But with the closure of its last permanent base in Asia, it would be easy to imagine the British fleet quietly sailing out of the region for good once the ceremony is over.
However, 'Flying Fish 97', the 13-day air and naval exercise which ends off the Malaysian island of Tioman in the South China Sea today tells a different story.
The war game, involving 12,000 soldiers, sailors and airmen, 160 fighter jets and 39 ships from Britain, Malaysia, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand is the most lavish joint exercise by the Five Power Defence Arrangement (FPDA) since its establishment in 1971.
Britain is supplying much of the muscle, with the aircraft carrier HMS Illustrious, a nuclear-powered submarine, a guided-missile destroyer, an assault ship, frigates and other warships at the centre of the action.
All are part of Task Group 327.01, better known as Ocean Wave 97, the largest Royal Navy force since the Gulf War and its most powerful since the Falklands War of 1982.