Some social scientists spend their careers researching small-scale topics that may help push forward our understanding of bigger forces shaping our lives. Or not. Many academic papers are never cited.

That’s not an issue with Minxin Pei. He aims high and goes for the jugular, taking on one of the biggest topics imaginable in political science: Will China’s Communist Party stay in power in its present, authoritarian form? Mr. Pei, a professor of government at Claremont McKenna College, argues that the odds are high that by 2030, China’s government will be quite different, pushed to change by the endemic corruption of the current party system. Corruption is the subject of his forthcoming book, “China’s Crony Capitalism: The Dynamics of Regime Decay.”

In an interview, he discussed why he believes one-party rule in China is unsustainable.

Q. You argue that for the Chinese Communist Party to make it past 2030 in its present form would break a lot of precedents. Why that date?

A. At present, China’s socioeconomic development, measured in income and education attainment, has reached the median level at which comparable countries (Communist, middle-income and Asian) made the transition from dictatorship to some form of democracy in the last 40 years. If China’s development continues in the next 15 years, even at a much slower pace, it will have created, by 2030, a society in which maintaining an autocratic regime is far more difficult, if not impossible. Historically, no autocratic regimes have survived for more than 74 years, because of the decay of their ideology and the corruption of the ruling elites. The Communist Party will have been in power for 81 years by 2030.