Yes, I know of people that can lip read Chinese to a reasonable degree. As to the why, Chinese generally is a di-syllabic langugage. A simple example would be the word “go”. In Chinese, there may be 20 words with that proununciation, and say maybe 5 words with that pronounciation and tone. Even if you can hear, it can be confusing. So, in Chinese, rather than say “go”, you would tack on another word or syllable and say “go out”.
In the two word or two syllable context, then it is usually pretty clear what word is used.
Lip readers do the same