diff --git a/src/browser/ui/ReactDOMComponent.js b/src/browser/ui/ReactDOMComponent.js
index d596315a39..aa8a181b56 100644
--- a/src/browser/ui/ReactDOMComponent.js
+++ b/src/browser/ui/ReactDOMComponent.js
@@ -306,14 +306,17 @@ ReactDOMComponent.Mixin = {
        || this._tag === 'textarea')
       && ret.charAt(0) === '\n'
     ) {
-      // Add an invisible node that's not a newline, because the HTML syntax
-      // ignores the first character in these tags if it's a newline
+      // text/html ignores the first character in these tags if it's a newline
+      // Prefer to break application/xml over text/html (for now) by adding
+      // a newline specifically to get eaten by the parser.
+      // (Alternately for textareas, replacing "^\n" with "\r\n" doesn't get eaten,
+      // and the first \r is normalized out by HTMLTextAreaElement#value.)
       // See: <http://www.w3.org/TR/html-polyglot/#newlines-in-textarea-and-pre>
       // See: <http://www.w3.org/TR/html5/syntax.html#element-restrictions>
       // See: <http://www.w3.org/TR/html5/syntax.html#newlines>
       // See: Parsing of "textarea" "listing" and "pre" elements
       //  from <http://www.w3.org/TR/html5/syntax.html#parsing-main-inbody>
-      return '<!---->' + ret;
+      return '\n' + ret;
     } else {
       return ret;
     }