★ A major economics primer under the super brand “Half‑Hour Comics,” backed by a hit IP with 7 million followers. This is the latest popular‑science work by Chen Lei (pen name: Er Hunzi), creator of comic‑style education, following the bestselling Half‑Hour Comics: Chinese History and Tang Poetry. The series has become the #1 knowledge‑comic brand in China, consistently topping sales charts.

★ Hilarious comics demystify everyday economics and cure all confusion. Why are pension funds running short? Why did China relax its two‑child policy? What's the use of the “five social insurances and one housing fund”? What should you know before buying a house? No boring numbers or jargon—just funny sketches and punchlines that make sense of these common puzzles and reveal the economic principles behind them.

★ Critically acclaimed and commercially successful, with over 10,000 positive reviews. Douban rating 6.9 from 12,000+ raters. Readers praise it as “the simplest way to understand the origin of money, social security, pensions, taxes, loans, consumer psychology, pyramid schemes, and more.”

The set comprises four volumes:
Vol.1 Everyday Life Basics
Vol.2 Financial Crises
Vol.3 Financial Crises (Finale)
Vol.4 Personal Finance

To most readers, economics means something professional and abstruse, but the Half-Hour Comics team led by Chen Lei (pen name: Erhunzi) uses hand-drawn comics and jokes to serve up famous historical financial-crisis events as punchlines while making the laws of economic development crystal clear:
Why did Japan's economy stagnate for a full decade? The cause was nothing more than signing a document.
How did George Soros single-handedly upend the Asian economy? In truth he used just three steps.
Why did the subprime crisis erupt? It turns out it was all forced out by the pressure of buying a home.
…No dull number-crunching, no obscure jargon—just fun jokes and easy-to-read comics that answer these questions and untangle the bewildering economic principles behind them: short selling, the herd effect, the flying-geese model, asset securitization… Shattering economics' lofty image, it lets you, between fits of laughter, accidentally see straight through the laws of economic development!

Chen Lei (pen names: Erhunzi / Hunzi Ge)
A pioneer of comic-style popular science, Chairman of Shanghai Hunzhi Culture Communication Co., Ltd., holder of a master's degree from Northwestern Polytechnical University, and a senior science-communication researcher.

After earning his master's from Northwestern Polytechnical University in 2009, he joined Shanghai Volkswagen as a designer and began publishing original popular-science comics online in 2012. In 2014, with 1.47 million yuan in angel investment from CCTV host Zhang Quanling and an additional 15 million yuan from Xu Xiaoping, he founded a comics studio. In 2015 he launched the "Hunzhi" WeChat account; by 2025 its cross-platform following reached 64 million, with total reads surpassing 500 million. In 2017 his Comic Chinese History sold out within seven hours of release, driving history books to the top of national sales for three consecutive years. In 2021 he won the Best Comics Publishing Award at the China Animation Golden Dragon Awards. In 2022 he was appointed Online Integrity Ambassador. In 2023 he opened the Hunzhi cultural complex at Shanghai Tower. In 2024 he was named one of the Top Ten Innovative Figures among Shanghai Cultural Enterprises (5th edition) and received the 16th Shanghai Outstanding Public Science Communicator title. He serves as a member of the All-China Youth Federation, a member of the Shanghai Youth Federation, and vice president of the Shanghai Youth Literature and Art Federation, among other public roles.

His representative works include the Half-Hour Comics Chinese History series (cumulative sales exceeding 30 million copies), the Half-Hour Comics World History series, the Half-Hour Comics Science History series (winner of the 2022 Shanghai Excellent Popular Science Book award), Half-Hour Comics: The Big Bang (selected among the 2022 National Excellent Popular Science Works), and Comic Centenary of the Party: The Founding.

Chapter 1. The Middle Eastern Tycoon's Revenge: The Oil Crisis (I)
Chapter 2. The Middle Eastern Tycoon's Revenge: The Oil Crisis (II)
Chapter 3. Just a Signature, and the Economy Stagnated for a Decade: Japan and the Plaza Accord (I)
Chapter 4. Just a Signature, and the Economy Stagnated for a Decade: Japan and the Plaza Accord (II)
Chapter 5. A Stock Crash Blamed on a Programmer: Black Monday, 1987
Chapter 6. Toppling the Asian Economy in Three Steps: Soros and the Asian Financial Crisis (I)
Chapter 7. Toppling the Asian Economy in Three Steps: Soros and the Asian Financial Crisis (II)
Chapter 8. The Subprime Crisis Forced Out by Home-Buying Pressure (I)
Chapter 9. The Subprime Crisis Forced Out by Home-Buying Pressure (II)
Chapter 10. Conclusion: A Survival Guide to Financial Crises