European stocks close lower Thursday

European stock markets closed lower on Thursday.

The United Kingdom's FTSE 100 index fell 0.26 percent to close at 10,725.03 points. France's CAC 40 index shed 1.39 percent to finish at 7,811.26 points. Germany's DAX index dropped 1.07 percent to end the session at 25,371.75 points.

China's shipbuilding industry maintained its leading position in the world across the three major indicators in the first nine months this year, according to data released on Friday by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.

From January to September, the country's shipbuilding output reached 58.05 million deadweight tonnes (DWT), up 50.7 percent year on year and accounting for 63.6 percent of the global total, the data showed.

New orders totaled 175.29 million DWT during the period, surging 163.2 percent from a year earlier and representing 81.8 percent of the global market share.

As of the end of September, the sector's holding orders stood at 399.13 million DWT, up 64.8 percent year on year. This volume accounted for 72.4 percent of the global total.

The proportion of China's new orders of green energy-powered ships reached 74.1 percent of the global total, up 5.7 percentage points compared with the January-June period.

"China has received over two thirds of the world's new orders of green energy-powered ships this year. In fact, the volume of new orders of green energy-powered ships received by China in the first half of the year already exceeded that of the whole of last year. The sector's economic benefits will rise significantly, and may even surpass the historical peak. That will make a positive contribution to the growth of the industrial economy," said Li Yanqing, vice chairman of the China Association of the National Shipbuilding Industry.