A communication device receives a parallel hybrid automatic repeat request (HARQ) communication instruction, where the parallel HARQ communication instruction is used to instruct the communication device to send or receive data in a parallel HARQ manner, where the sending data in a parallel HARQ manner by the communication device is sending, by the communication device, at least one data packet with same content within a transmission time interval; and the receiving data in a parallel HARQ manner by the communication device is receiving at least one data packet with same content within a transmission time interval, and performing combined decoding on the received at least one data packet with same content; and the communication device sends or receives the data in the parallel HARQ manner according to the parallel HARQ communication instruction. According to the present invention, a delay of data transmission can be reduced.