The article analyzes the activities of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and the efforts of China and Russia to promote the idea of forming Greater Eurasia as a non-Western international community in order to embody their geostrategic, foreign policy and economic interests. Based on the theory of institutional balance, the article reveals the significance of the SCO over the past 20 years, the expansion of membership and geographical coverage, as well as some of the problems that it faced in consolidating and realizing its potential. Although Beijing and Moscow have many common interests in the region, their priorities and approaches may not always coincide. The author argues that the most important transformation of the SCO as a regional organization lies in its usefulness in an exclusive institutional balancing strategy for the PRC and Russia to prevent widespread US influence in Central Asia, to build trust among member states, and to turn the SCO into a regional security community for protecting the interests of member countries.