Housing prices in 70 major Chinese cities rose an average 5.7 percent in July over the previous year, down 0.1 percentage point from the previous month, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said Tuesday.

The prices of new commodity housing increased by 6.7 percent, up 0.1 percentage point over June. Shenzhen, a south China city bordering Hong Kong, recorded a 13.6 percent rise in its prices of new commodity houses, the highest of all cities.

It was followed by Beijing at 11.1 percent, Hohhot(Inner Mongolia) at 9.6 percent, Guangzhou (Guangdong Province) at nine percent and Chengdu (Sichuan Province), also nine percent.

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