These days, people are still reading former President George Bush's lips, but they are paying a lot of money for the privilege.

When Atlantic Richfield Co. wanted to add dazzle to its opening bash for a $1.1-billion natural-gas project in China last year, the company turned to the former president and China envoy, who enjoys superstar status in Beijing. Arco paid Bush's traveling expenses, plus a $100,000 speaking fee.

Chinese President Jiang Xemin showed up, as did Wang Yan, president of the company responsible for offshore gas exploration. They joined Bush, Arco chairman Mike Bowlin and other Arco executives. Bush and the Arco people also mingled with Vice Premier Zou Jiahua, the government minister most closely associated with energy activities, in a luncheon at the Great Hall of the People on Tiananmen Square.

"Events like this help renew contacts," Arco spokesman Albert Greenstein says. "Mr. Bush is a well-known figure in China. It helped to raise our profile in the region."

The former president is in demand by U.S. companies as a prestige-builder both at home and overseas, but especially in places like China, where guanxi, the phrase for political connections, is considered a prerequisite for doing business.

In the four years since he left office, Bush, already a wealthy man, has earned millions of dollars speaking publicly for about 40 companies. He has traveled to China for corporate employers at least eight times and visited other Asian countries as well. He usually charges $100,000 for trips abroad and $80,000 for domestic appearances, plus expenses, though his fees can vary.

For this, Bush generally restricts himself to giving speeches and rubbing shoulders with corporate executives and high-level government officials. Many companies are willing to pay Bush for his services; those firms include Citicorp's Citibank unit, IMC Global Inc., Canada's Barrick Gold Corp., Goldman, Sachs & Co. and various media companies, including Dow Jones & Co., publisher of the Wall Street Journal.

What Bush brings to the table is a knowledge of names and faces at the highest levels of Asian governments. "He's a walking repository of information about how these people do business," says Charles O. Jones, a presidential scholar at the University of Wisconsin in Madison.

Bush generally speaks about geopolitical events but also sprinkles in compliments for the country he is visiting and the company he is representing. Recurring themes include easing tensions between the United States and Asia and, when in China or Vietnam, his opinion that economic openness can lead to human-rights reforms.

The former president uses both a lecture agent, Washington Speakers Bureau, and his staff to make bookings. The fees he earns are in addition to the public money he receives, including his annual federal pension of $148,000 and a staff allowance of $96,000.

Bush's spokesman and speechwriter, James McGrath, says his boss is entitled to speak before any group he likes as long as he "conducts himself in a way that doesn't bring dishonor on the office he held." Bush is satisfied, McGrath says, that his activities pass this test. He doesn't serve on corporate boards, because to some that might "diminish the office of the presidency," McGrath says. He also keeps most of his personal assets in a blind trust. In addition to his corporate appearances, since January 1995 Bush has participated in charity events that raised $26-million, McGrath says.

One such event was a dinner in April 1996 at Innisbrook Hilton Resort in Palm Harbor to benefit a new heart and vascular pavilion at Morton Plant Hospital in Clearwater. George and Barbara Bush were to be paid about $80,000 for their appearance.

These days, Bush rarely grants interviews and declined to do so for this article.

Bush isn't the first former president to profit this way. President Ronald Reagan was paid $2-million by a Japanese media conglomerate for two 20-minute speeches in 1989 and made the rounds on what he called "the mashed-potato circuit" for $60,000 an event. President Gerald Ford has served in posts on corporations' boards. Like Bush, President Jimmy Carter declines to serve on corporate boards. Most of the money he receives for speaking goes to the non-profit Carter Center in Atlanta, a spokesman says.

Political celebrities such as Henry Kissinger and Colin Powell also can command five-figure fees on the lecture circuit. Some journalists, such as ABC News commentator Cokie Roberts, have collected handsome fees for speeches as well.

Although Bush prefers the role of speechmaking, last year he showed he was willing to do more for Barrick Gold. The firm had invited Bush to join its advisory board, which is separate from its board of directors and which includes former Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney and former Senate Majority Leader Howard Baker. But Barrick came up against Bush's policy against serving on corporate boards.

The solution: a new title. Bush became "senior honorary adviser" to the advisory board, for which he received some expense-paid travel, along with compensation and stock options of undisclosed value.

Last year, Bush was briefly involved in Barrick's battle with Bre-X Minerals Ltd. over rights to mine a gold deposit that Bre-X claimed it found in Busang, Indonesia. In September, Bush wrote a letter to Indonesian President Suharto praising Barrick, without addressing the nature of the gold find.

"I simply want to take the liberty of telling you how impressed I am with Barrick _ its vision, leadership, technical achievements and great financial strength," he wrote.

Bush's letter was just one part of Barrick's efforts in the gold squabble. Despite complaints from some Bre-X shareholders, "he has no misgivings about what he did at all," McGrath says.

Barrick didn't wind up with mining rights, and the Busang gold find turned out to be an embarrassing fraud. Bre-X recently filed for bankruptcy protection in Calgary, Alberta.

Bush's first client in Asia was Citibank. In November 1993, he traveled to Taiwan, in the first of eight paid Citibank trips. "He's a leader and we're leaders," says a bank spokeswoman in Singapore.

Appearances by the former president give his corporate employers bragging rights. In its 1996 annual report, IMC Global, a Northbrook, Ill., fertilizer seller, noted that Bush was the keynote speaker at its September 1995 "World Food Production" conference in Beijing. "Two months later," IMC chairman Wendell Bueche informed shareholders, "an unprecedented full-year agreement for the sale of diammonium phosphate (a chemical fertilizer) was reached with Sinochem, China's central buying agency."

Another stop on Bush's circuit: Thailand, January 1994, as guest of Thailand's CP Group, a conglomerate of agribusiness, telecommunications and other operations. The company's chairman is [Dhanin Chearavanont (born 1939)], an ethnic Chinese businessman who also enjoys warm relations with President Clinton.

For the 1994 event, CP Group invited Bush to receptions with Chinese leaders and CP executives. In one of his CP speeches, Bush defended his decision as president to remain engaged with China despite its bloody crackdown on democracy protesters at Tiananmen Square.