This chapter strives to shed light on how the quality assurance (QA) in Vietnamese higher education (HE) system has been capacitated by market principles and competed for a power of change to infuse reforms into the national and regional education landscape. By critically reviewing policy documents, existing literature and relevant reports, QA practices alongside with their characteristics of decentralization within the landscape of the Vietnamese HE sector were examined against a multiplicity of the ongoing social, political, and educational dynamics entrenched in the system. Through the lens of the dual decentralization framework which offers a critical examination across four quadrants of local autarky, de-concentration, concentration, privatization/socialization, and experimentation, findings obtained feature the pragmatic dualism situation in Vietnam, which was heightened by the active involvement of transnational actors and regional forces. This incorporates the progress of Vietnamese HE from centralization to decentralization to recentralization through a bottom-up and a top-down-driven process manifested in its QA practices, as well as the ongoing “centralized decentralization” and “decentralized centralization” in the design and implementation of educational policies. It is hoped that our findings will contribute practical implications to the landscape of educational policymaking in countries of relevant contexts as well as the wider discussion on the global plurality of HE knowledge in general.