Embodiments of the present invention disclose a transmission method, apparatus, and system for uplink transmit diversity, which relate to the field of communications. To determine activation or deactivation of uplink transmit diversity in time and effectively to improve uplink transmission quality, the technical solution provided in the present invention is as follows: determining, by a base station, to activate/deactivate uplink transmit diversity of a user equipment and sending an activation/deactivate request indication to a radio network controller, the activation/deactivate request indication is used for the radio network controller to instruct the user equipment to activate/deactivate the uplink transmit diversity. The present invention is applicable to the control of uplink transmit diversity transmission.