Embodiments of this application disclose a channel coding method and apparatus. The method includes: obtaining a subsequence based on a first sequence and a second sequence; and determining a generator polynomial or a generator matrix based on the subsequence, where the generator polynomial or the generator matrix is used for cyclic code encoding. According to embodiments of this application, generator polynomials or generator matrices for channel coding of different lengths and different bit rates are determined by using two sequences, so that storage space is reduced, and storage complexity is reduced.