Property prices in Chinas major cities continued to rise in May, according to official government figures.

Property prices in seventy large cities rose by 5.8% year-on-year, following a 0.7% price rise in May, according to the National Development and Reform Commission and the National Bureau of Statistics.

The price of newly built homes in China also rose in May, up by 6.1 percent.

Residential property prices in Dalian, a coastal city in Northeast Chinas Liaoning Province, climbed 15.2 percent year-on-year in May, the highest increase among the 70 cities surveyed.

"My sense is that the real price rises are much higher than the reported figures," said Yi Xianrong, a researcher with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and a long critic of the property market.