A method for encoding acknowledgement information includes: receiving a component carrier, where the component carrier includes at least one downlink subframe; generating acknowledgement information bits corresponding to the component carrier according to the received component carrier; dividing the acknowledgement information bits into two groups so that each group includes at least one acknowledgement information bit, where the at least one acknowledgement information bit corresponds to physical downlink shared channel PDSCH transmission, and/or downlink control information DCI, where the DCI is used for indicating downlink semi-persistent scheduling SPS release; and encoding the two divided groups of acknowledgement information bits to obtain two groups of codeword bits, respectively, and generating, from the two groups of codeword bits obtained by the encoding, total codeword bits to be transmitted. In addition, a method for receiving acknowledgement information, an apparatus for encoding acknowledgement information, and an apparatus for processing acknowledgement information are also included.