I don't know if you're aware, but Chrome uses V8 to provide that functionality. Perhaps this is a Chesterton's Fence situation you should think about a bit?

(Though, as the sibling comment notes, it uses JavaScriptCore, which is Webkit's JavaScript engine, not V8 at all.)

Sorry, I'm fully aware of what V8 is (I actually embedded V8 once myself). By "V8 engine", I meant an engine containing V8, among other things such as a renderer. Bad wording, my mistake.

React Native doesn't contain a renderer in the Chrome-y sense of the term, to the best of my knowledge. It wraps native APIs instead. Am I missing something?

Well, eventually Chrome also calls native APIs to perform the rendering.

You're stretching. Chrome calls native APIs to render a rasterized view. React Native calls native APIs to render native widgets in a native window, i.e. an Android activity.

You are aware that chrome uses V8, not the other way around?