Ben Harburg, Managing Partner of MSA Capital and Rafik Nayed, Group Chief Executive Officer of Al Salam Bank Bahrain speak with Geoff Cutmore, anchor of CNBC on Day 3 of CNBC East Tech West at LN Garden Hotel Nansha Guangzhou on November 20, 2019 in Nansha, Guangzhou, China.

The ongoing U.S.-China trade war may be prematurely pushing the world's second largest economy toward greater self-sufficiency, but that could prove a win for the country as it seeks to make inroads into some of the world's biggest untapped markets.

Ben Harburg, managing partner of Beijing-based venture capital firm MSA Capital, told CNBC the "decoupling" of China from its largest trade partner has forced Chinese businesses to innovate and diversify beyond their preferred timeline. However, he added that that has also served to accelerate their already planned push into the Middle East and Africa.

"This forced self-sufficiency and forced decoupling has yielded them a really attractive market," Harburg said of Chinese companies — most notably those in tech — at CNBC's East Tech West conference in the Nansha district of Guangzhou, China.

"The chip industry here would have loved another five years to get its feet underneath it. Operating systems locally would have preferred more time for maturation," he continued during a panel hosted by CNBC's Geoff Cutmore entitled "Beyond One Belt, One Road."

"But it's kind of the necessity of innovation at this moment to survive. It's pushing these companies to emerging technology markets and what they're finding there are incredibly attractive conditions."

Harburg highlighted particular opportunities in the e-commerce and banking sectors, within which many of the regions' markets have a penetration rate of less than 10%.

"China (has) an e-commerce penetration rate of around 30%. In the Middle East today it's 2%," said Harburg. "(It's) hugely attractive to walk millions of people online and find them a place in e-commerce that's obviously mobile-first.