In the last 50 years, no one anticipated even the slightest change in the communist stronghold that belonged to Fidel Castro. Even with the fall of communism in Moscow and Berlin, nothing appeared to shake the reigning dynasty in Cuba, and nothing will in the near future. Like North Korea, Cuba is a communist microcosm shrouded in the corners of a capitalist world, and in it its people are either too poor or too exhausted to encourage new thinking.
Yet there is hope, a gleaming sliver of hope, that Raul, Fidel's brother who is expected to undertake Fidel's political control from now till eternity, admires the co-existance of communism and capitalism that the Chinese and Vietnamese enjoy, and therefore may push through economic reforms in a decades long process.
However, this process won't come easy (there are so many howevers). When American businesses look to China, they see a market with 1.3 billion potential customers and a mass supply of cheap labor. Perhaps that is why some capitalists here look at China's human rights record with a blind eye. That won't be the case for Cuba.
Also, at the end of the day, once Cubans get economic freedom at hand, they will demand political freedom as a side dish, for the two go hand in hand. That is not something that Raul is capable of stopping, as the Chinese has learnt so far with the internet. But all this comes with time.
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