I maintain that "blame" is the right word. He doesn't establish any real casual connections of poor Chinese writing to European linguistic influence, so it seem

I maintain that "blame" is the right word. He doesn't establish any real casual connections of poor Chinese writing to European linguistic influence, so it seems to me that he is just pointing fingers at some convenient villain (European/English influence) instead of admitting that maybe people are just bad at writing. Or it occurred at a time when literacy rates massively increased, and thus there was some vulgarization of the language to some extent. I think he explains how to write better Chinese pretty well, I just don't think pointing fingers at other languages is helpful especially if it isn't grounded in fact or evidence.