A packet processing method, apparatus, and system are provided. A policy library is deployed on a gateway control device in a centralized manner, and packet identification and policy execution are deployed on each gateway forwarding device. The solution includes: receiving, by a gateway control device, packet characteristic information that is of a first packet and that is sent by a gateway forwarding device, where the packet characteristic information is obtained after the gateway forwarding device performs packet inspection on the first packet; searching, by the gateway control device according to the packet characteristic information of the first packet, a prestored policy library for a first processing policy corresponding to the packet characteristic information; and sending, by the gateway control device, the first processing policy to the gateway forwarding device, so that the gateway forwarding device executes a packet processing action in the first processing policy.