J. Douglas Winter is no political activist.

But he’s feeling the heat of an election year as he engages in his everyday business: helping high-tech companies shift work to China.

Over the past five years, Winter’s firm, Objectiva Software Solutions, has helped a dozen clients nationwide, including several in San Diego, send work to his outpost in Beijing.

Winter says his main purpose is to help companies save money. But with unemployment running high and the job market stagnate, his business has become a bit more controversial.

“Outsourcing is definitely a lightning rod issue,” Winter says. “The economy’s been really slow recovering from the recession and, especially since we’re in an election year, everyone’s looking for a scapegoat.”

Scapegoat or not, outsourcing has become the focal point of debate embroiling Main Street, Wall Street and Capitol Hill.

In the past three years, the United States lost about 2.3 million jobs, and offshoring has been named as a culprit. Economists estimate that about 200,000 jobs in the service sector and 500,000 in manufacturing have gone overseas.

A survey last week by San Diego’s TEC International a training organization for chief executives shows that trend is continuing. Twenty percent of the 1,100 chief executives polled plan to move some operations offshore within the next 12 months. More than 40 percent of the CEOs interviewed in California plan to shift work offshore.

Objectiva is a prime example of outsourcing. The firm has about 100 employees in its software development center in Beijing, where it employs starting-level software engineers for as little as $12,000 a year. Winter says he’s on track to build the office to 250 people by the end of this year, and 1,000 in the next three years.

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