Not really. React gives you the ability to create "rich web applications", but it can be used just as well for the most basic of landing pages. Couple that with SSR and you get basically the old "HTML,CSS,JS" setup with much better tooling,.

I can't call the constantly shifting sands of "nodejs" ecosystem a better tooling.

I understand many React tools depend on Node but the React side of it has felt very stable to me in the last three or so years.