Despite the explosion of global citizenship education in Vietnam in the past few years, there is no consensus on what the concept actually means. Through discourse analysis of both the state and non-state actors, this article maps the frictions in global citizenship discourses in Vietnam. Behind the shared call for global citizenship education (GCE) is a competition by different actors to reinterpret this trend for their own benefits. While GCE is promoted at the highest policy level in Vietnam for national competitiveness, it is simultaneously becoming a powerful marketing tool for private actors to expand a new market in education. This contestation over the meaning of "global citizenship" reflects global debates around global citizenship education, but with particular Vietnamese distinctions, dynamics, and anxieties that we frame as a sense of postcolonial instrumentalism. These attempts to define "global citizenship" are part of a broader struggle to redefine the ideal Vietnamese citizen--a new postsocialist, neoliberal, and postcolonial subject of the twenty-first century. As such, contestation also opens the ground for alternatives to flourish, which will require elevating local educators' voices.