The invention discloses a universal converter with a countercurrent resistor and a control method, and belongs to the field of AC asynchronous motor starting and speed regulation devices. The control method is mainly characterized in that a large electrolytic capacitor of a traditional converter is replaced with a small capacitor, and leakage inductance current attenuation is accelerated to implement effective control by adopting a method of energy feedback through resistance consumption. After the large electrolytic capacitor is removed, ripple voltage which is directly from a power network and is consistent with three-phase line voltage is reserved on a DC bus, and control on various performance requirements in the frequency conversion process can be achieved through optimization of a control algorithm. The problems that the traditional converter is high in cost and large in volume are solved; and meanwhile, the converter can be bypassed to achieve a multi-purpose effect.