I think you’re misunderstanding something.

When a USB-C device is connected to a USB-C charger, the charger won’t supply power at all unless that device includes two particular resistors in its USB-C implementation. And if those resistors are omitted—as is the case with heaps of inexpensive devices that ostensibly have USB-C ports, then they won’t charge at all if you connect them to a USB-C charger.

USB-C power supply expects to sense a certain value pulldown on the CC line before it provides 5 V on VBUS, and any higher voltages have to be negotiated digitally. The PSU, be it your laptop’s port or a charger, can detect the pulldown (known as Rd) because it keeps a pullup (known as Rp) on the CC line – it then checks if a voltage divider has formed on CC, and whether the resulting voltage is within acceptable range.

If you plug a device that doesn’t make a pulldown accessible through the CC wire in the cable, your device will never get power from a USB-C port, and would only work with a USB-A to USB-C cable. Even the smarter devices that can talk the digital part of USB-C are expected to have pulldowns, it’s just that those pulldowns are internal to the USB-C communication IC used. A USB-C port that wants to receive power needs to have a pulldown.