[davnicwil]

One of the really powerful features of React is that server rendering of the views is trivial. This makes it very compelling even for content sites, where as you rightly say, time to first meaningful render of said content really matters after you hit the URL in your browser.

You could even write an entirely server-rendered web application, or a static website, in React should you be so inclined. In fact, I do the latter for my (very simple) personal site at https://davnicwil.com!

Nothing about React obliges you to do client rendering, a SPA app, or anything complex at all. It's, at the end of the day, just a view rendering library.