It does not need a class, it just need to be able to keep track of some kind of references. There's a million functional ways to do this without needing class.

It does not need a class, it just need to be able to keep track of some kind of references. There's a million functional ways to do this without needing class. React really should have gone from createClass to <insert better design pattern that doesn't rely on the class keyword here>. It already supports the module pattern. They easily could have expanded on that.