Embodiments of the present invention provide a communication method used for random access, including: receiving, by a terminal, random access preamble information sent by a base station; and before sending random access to the base station based on the random access preamble information, receiving, by the terminal, a random access response sent by the base station, where the random access response includes an uplink asynchronous hybrid automatic repeat request HARQ process identifier, and the uplink asynchronous HARQ process identifier is used by the terminal to send uplink data to the base station. Compared with the prior art, the communication method provided in the embodiments of the present invention can ensure to some extent that uplink data is transmitted timely and can effectively improve uplink data transmission reliability.