The present application discloses a downlink channel receiving method and a terminal device, including: receiving, by a terminal device, first downlink authorization information and second downlink authorization information that are sent by a network device, where the first downlink authorization information is used to indicate that the terminal device receives a first physical downlink shared channel PDSCH in a first time unit, the second downlink authorization information is used to indicate that the terminal device receives a second PDSCH in a second time unit, and at least one symbol of the first time unit and at least one symbol of the second time unit overlap in a time domain; determining, by the terminal device, according to a RNTI used to scramble the first downlink authorization information and the second downlink authorization information, a PDSCH that is preferentially decoded from the first PDSCH and the second PDSCH.