Abstract: Wang Yang’s bookprovides a systematic examination of the historical evolution of the Roman land system from the regal period to the late Republic, and offers a direct comparative analysis between the Roman experience and contemporary Chinese land institutions. Two core themes run through the book, that the evolution of land institutions is a product of the interaction between political structures and socio-economic conditions, and that the separation of ownership and use serves as the fundamental driving force behind the refinement of the property rights system. Methodologically, the book adopts an integrative perspective that transcends private law, a historical analytical approach tracing the genesis of legal concepts from practice, and a method of direct comparison. Building upon this foundation, this review draws on the evolution of Roman public land utilization models to propose a set of evaluative dimensions for measuring the security of land use rights on publicly owned land, and applies these dimensions to assess the current state of China’s land usufructuary rights across different aspects of security.