Actually, these are in China.

these are in China.

,,, where I wish they would stay. Mains cables from there have the flexibility of a steel rod.

China, along with several other countries use the Australian pin pattern however China orients their pins upside down, which is why the flexes come out of the top of the plug from the Australian perspective. They'd come close to being illegal here - even though they'd fit perfectly - because the angle of the side-entry would cause the plug to dislodged, creating the potential for an intermittent connection. They also don't have the pin insulators that are a requirement here now.

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A valve a day keeps the transistor away...

It's interesting as I was recently wondering about the origin of polarisation format for type-'I' sockets: The countries that use them are divided on this - Argentina choosing different idea than Australasia/China. So looking at my collection of 1930s/40s? US type-'I' sockets I had just noticed they do have a polarity (for when used with a neutral - 110v service?) So which countries today adopted this same convention? Well, looking at accompanying photo, you can see the left side (facing outlet) has copper-coloured terminal (indicating Hot), while neutral and earth are brass. Both the two Hubbell and the Arrow brands in photo have this convention while the Leviton (white) has no coding.

So it appears Australasia, then China kept this convention while Argentina modified it! Strangely, US is now right-side-Hot, so maybe odd-man-out Argentina aligned with this convention?

What horrible connections they are. They wouldn't be suitable for the stranded wiring in use today and would only be good for solid conductors. Australian HPM brand plug tops used to have connections like that instead of the clamp style used on plug tops made by Clipsal and I always steered clear of them. These days, both brands have clamp style connections.

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A valve a day keeps the transistor away...

I don't like the Chinese idea of using these upside down - at least the Argentinians aren't that strange.

Another similarity to Australia:
Early 1960's Ford Falcons were popular in both Argentina & Australia - much better than the British 6-cylinder Ford Zephyr IMO.
Working with a low budget, the first Ford Mustang was merely a sports-car body dropped onto a 1963 Falcon platform!!

QUOTE: What horrible connections they are. They wouldn't be suitable for the stranded wiring in use today and would only be good for solid conductors.

In the USA, we use only solid wire for our 15, 20 and 30 amp circuits. So those screw terminals would be fine. Though I do like the clamping style terminals better outlets use. It would not be code to use "portable cable" (this kind of wire uses stranded wire) for house wire, and it's frowned on to use house wire cable for extension cords.

Sounds like China wants the ground pin closest to the north star Polaris. Which means "ground up" in the northern hemisphere. And "ground down" in the southern hemisphere. The Aussie style American outlets in my house in NJ have the ground down, though...

Hard wiring in Australia is typically seven strand. 7/067 or 2.5mm² is for power points and 7/050 or 1.5mm² is for lighting circuits. If I was building a house from the ground up though, I'd use 2.5 throughout. It's cheaper, and you get more meat in the connections.

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A valve a day keeps the transistor away...