[anonfunction]

You don't need Node.js to be running as a server to use React. Most people would use it to build their react app which would be served as static file(s) and communicate with some backend APIs. The backend API could be written in Golang. It would serve data which React would render in the browser or take requests for actions such as logging in, adding a comment to the database, etc...

[hn-query]

The data being returned in the response from the Golang API server, would that be the React view components in the form of JavaScript objects?

[ksherlock]

The back end should return data, in the form of json objects, xml, plain text, animated cat gifs, etc.