A hand motion identification method includes: obtaining a to-be-identified video; performing area-locating and tracking of a hand for the to-be-identified video, and extracting a red-green-blue (RGB) video and a depth information video of the hand; detecting the RGB video and the depth information video of the hand, to obtain a feature point; representing the feature point by using a 3D Mesh motion scale-invariant feature transform (MoSIFT) feature descriptor; and comparing the 3D Mesh MoSIFT feature descriptor of the feature point with a 3D Mesh MoSIFT feature descriptor in a positive sample obtained through beforehand training, to obtain a hand motion category in the to-be-identified video.