Did China's new leaders take part in a school bloodbath?

Look closely around Qinghua University's campus and you can still detect traces of the attempt by Chairman Mao Zedong's Red Guards to tunnel their way out of the besieged science faculty during the "100-day war" fought here during the Cultural Revolution.

Qinghua University was the birthplace of the Red Guards – the fanatical teenage activists who terrorised "closet capitalists" in the Cultural Revolution. It was here during Beijing's Red August of 1966 that middle-school students began beating their teachers in a savage bloodbath endorsed by Mao.

Over the next few days, many of those who witnessed, and possibly even participated in those atrocities, are stepping into the highest offices of the Chinese state. In the presence of delegates from all over China gathered in Beijing, 38 alumni will be sworn in to top government posts during the National People's Congress meeting.

Hu Jintao, the new Communist Party leader, will become China's President and head of state. In addition to Mr Hu, three other Qinghua graduates, Wu Guangzheng, Wu Bangguo and Huang Ju, are in the nine-member politburo.

Qinghua continues to play a part in the life of China's "fourth generation" of leaders. It is where Mr Hu, known by China as the grey man, chose to host George Bush on the US President's state visit last year.

Some believe Mr Hu has surrounded himself with a "Qinghua gang" and that friendships and rivalries forged during the Cultural Revolution will be an important influence in future Chinese politics. Among the classmates Mr Hu is promoting are Wang Shucheng, to Minister of Water Resources, Zhang Fusen, to Justice Minister, Xu Rongkai, to deputy secretary of the Yunnan Provincial Committee and Jia Chunwang, to Minister of Public Security.

What if anything Mr Hu and his classmates said or did during the Cultural Revolution has been carefully air-brushed out of their official biographies. What seems certain is that the new rulers emerged from this crucible as tough, cynical, anti-pathetic to any ideology, ruthless – and highly secretive.

Song Yongyi, a contemporary of Mr Hu, and now a historian of the Cultural Revolution at Dickinson College in the US, believes Mr Hu participated in the activities of the April 14 Faction of the Red Guards at Qinghua.

The faction was one of two rival gangs within the Red Guards. Initially, members of both enthusiastically answered Mao's calls for a violent class struggle but later they split into two rival factions.

The ultra-leftists of the Jinggangshan Regiment, led by chemistry student Kuai Dafu, thought all officials must be targeted as "capitalist roaders" while the "moderates" opposed attacking top officials although they approved of persecuting anyone labelled as "reactionaries".

Mao dangled before both groups the prospect of wielding real political power when he invited the students to join governing revolutionary committees across the country.

So when the Jinggangshan Regiment stormed China's Foreign Ministry, the April 14 Faction tried to trump it by sacking the British embassy in August 1967, setting it on fire and kicking and beating the 18 men and five women inside.

Militants from both sides became known as "iron rods" and quickly progressed from spears, knives and revolvers to rifles, hand grenades, machine-guns, mines and even tanks.

Wang Youqin, a senior lecturer at the University of Chicago, has tried to piece together what happened during Red August, from more than 1,000 witness interviews. "We still don't have the whole picture of what happened. The violence during Peking's Red August has never been completely reported," Dr Wang said.

What we do know is that between 1966 and 1969, 48 people were killed on Qinghua's campus. Thirty died with about 400 were injured in the "100-day war", which ended on 27 July.

No one has dared investigate the exact role of Hu Jintao. That is still such a dangerous activity that Mr Song was arrested in China three years ago collecting Red Guard publications and released only after an international campaign.

Mr Hu had stayed on in Qinghua after graduating in 1964 to work in the Communist Youth League as an assistant political instructor. He almost certainly participated in the initial Red Guard activity and reportedly put up posters attacking faculty members stigmatised by their class background or "feudal ideas". How far Mr Hu he went is not known and no evidence suggests he was one of the diehards who attacked the British embassy.

However, it is revealing that Mr Hu has surrounded himself by those who must have been heavily involved. Mr Zhang, for instance, was the president of Qinghua student union in 1961, and Wu Guangzheng, the Politburo Standing Committee member, is a former deputy party secretary of Qinghua's student branch. Furthermore, Xu Rongkai was president of the student union in 1966. One former April 14 Faction leader is Jia Chunwang, now being promoted to run the judiciary as head of the state procuracy.

It is also revealing that only the "moderate" Red Guards are now in power. After 1979, their rivals soon ended up serving long prison terms.Many others being promoted as the rising stars of the "fifth generation" were not undergraduates but teenagers during the Cultural Revolution. This can only mean that they were more violent than their elders.

The first to answer Mao's call, the high school classes of 1966, 1967, and 1968, took the lead in wreaking murder and mayhem. The Red Guards made their appearance in China at the Middle School attached to Qinghua University. In June 1966, pupils formed a "dog-beating team". ThroughoutRed August, pupils repeatedly organised beating sessions. Dr Wang was at Beijing Normal University's Girls School, which was attended by Liu Tingting, a daughter of Liu Shaoqi, then number two to Mao. Another student was Deng Rong, daughter of the future leader Deng Xiaoping, then a senior party figure, when the headmistress of the school, Bian Zhongyun, died at the hands of her students.

She says that Liu Tingting, now a successful consultant, once boasted she had helped kill three people at a time when saying such things showed one's revolutionary ardour.

That August more than 100 teachers died in the Beijing district of Xicheng. On 19 August, the students of Beijing Fourth, Sixth, and Eighth middle schools held a "struggle meeting" inside the Forbidden City at which several dozen teachers were beaten.

Then on 24 August, 1966, the Red Guards from the Qinghua University Middle School transported truckloads from 12 middle schools in Beijing to Qinghua campus, where they beat up administrators and professors.

The next big outburst of violence was in 1968 during the "Cleansing of the Class Ranks" campaign. Many teachers were detained on campus for years and some were again hauled out and beaten by students.

After 1979, the Communist Party was flooded with accusatory letters naming those who deserved punishment for their acts. But as Mr Song points out: "Those with the right family connections could escape".

The party's determination to bury the past leaves many angry. Dr Wang said: "First they deleted the names of the victims, then they downgraded the crimes so the perpetrators had no need to apologise."

The legacy of the Cultural Revolution is unlikely to haunt the new generation as the bloodshed in 1989 casts a shadow on the generation of leaders bowing out. Last week, two bombs exploded in the cafeterias of Qinghua and Beijing universities, injuring nine people. No motive has been put forward but if nothing else, the attack stirred old wounds.