Pandoc conversion from markdown to docx with blockquotes and citations

When I do this, I get a docx where my markdown blockquotes (>) have not been properly converted, but with citation conversion working:

pandoc --filter pandoc-citeproc --bibliography ref/my-refs.bib in.md -o out.docx -f markdown

When I do this, the blockquotes work, but citations are not converted:

pandoc --filter pandoc-citeproc --bibliography ref/my-refs.bib in.md -o out.docx -f markdown_strict

The only difference between the two is markdown vs markdown_strict

How can I get blockquotes + citations to work?

This is caused by the blank_before_blockquote extension:

Extension: blank_before_blockquote

Standard Markdown syntax does not require a blank line before a block quote. Pandoc does require this (except, of course, at the beginning of the document). The reason for the requirement is that it is all too easy for a > to end up at the beginning of a line by accident (perhaps through line wrapping). So, unless the markdown_strict format is used, the following does not produce a nested block quote in pandoc:

> This is a block quote.
>> Nested.

You can selectively disable this extension by using -f markdown-blank_before_blockquote.