My take done short and lossy: the US just wants Cuba and Venezuela to become like China. That should give us hope.

The medium version is that so long as Cuba doesn't lose control of the commanding heights of the economy and the government isn't controlled by private interests, they'll be fine. It's more dangerous having compradors and spies more integrated into your economy, but the conditions in Cuba don't allow for independence. It's very difficult for any major manufacturer to get goods there, and the US blockade makes it economically untenable. Cuba can't say no to the US if the US is willing to starve all of the people there.

This is the first I’ve heard of it.

It could be coming from imperial pressure, but I wouldn’t assume so. They may be taking a page from China as the article suggests. The devil’s in the details, which I don’t have.

I wouldn't trust any non Cuban Government controlled source of information as accurately reflecting what the Cuban Government is doing or trying to do, western media is overwhelmingly controlled by Capitalist interests (that includes reuters) and they have been trying to destroy Cuba for a long long time, one weapon of the Global North (and the US especially) is massive amounts of lies and misinformation, and they've done this many many times. As psyops are constantly being used by the hegemon against Actually Existing Socialist countries (as well as ones that fight back and resist like Iran and Russia) everything heard not from the leaders of Cuba itself should be read with a whole BUCKET salt.

Edit: P.S. also Gusanos are a thing, if the Cubans being interviewed are not actually in Cuba itself, that is a bad sign, another issue is if complex political questions are being asked to total randos rather then actual Theory experts of Cuba's Communist Party (don't know it's name) they may be fishing for useful misunderstanding. Sorry I haven't actually read the article myself so hopefully this is still useful.