A polar encoding and rate matching method is provided, including: determining one or more to-be-deleted rows of a generator matrix, where the generator matrix is determined based on a preset mother code length, and a column in which 1 in the one or more to-be-deleted rows is located includes at least one column with a column weight being 1; deleting, from the one or more to-be-deleted rows, a row corresponding to a polarized channel with lowest reliability, and deleting, from a column in which 1 in the row is located, a column with a column weight being 1, to obtain an after-deletion generator matrix; using the after-deletion generator matrix as a generator matrix to repeat the foregoing steps, until an order of a final generator matrix is equal to a target code length; and performing encoding and rate matching on a to-be-encoded bit based on the final generator matrix.