If I understand correctly, the DOM is retained, and React brings abstracts it efficiently back to a immediate mode API with some state retention, which has benefits since things stay consistent automatically.

In contrast, a UI model like WPF uses (declarative) data binding to achieve something similar, but without as much flexibility and with more verbosity.

I'm working on a system that allows for state retention in an immediate mode model, though wrapping WPF rather than HTML:

http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/people/smcdirm/managedti...